"Stick-on regenerative medicine" shows promise for treating intractable diseases

A research group led by Professor Kenichi Nagase from the Graduate School of Biomedical and Health Sciences at Hiroshima University, Assistant Professor Hironobu Takahashi from the Institute of Advanced BioMedical Engineering and Science at Tokyo Women's Medical University, and Professor David W. Grainger from the University of Utah (USA) has successfully fabricated mesenchymal stem cell sheets that secrete large amounts of therapeutic cytokines. This achievement is expected to enable effective treatment in regenerative medicine. Their results were published in Materials Today Bio on March 10.

Mesenchymal stem cells are cells found in bone marrow, adipose tissue, the umbilical cord, and other locations that secrete large amounts of proteins called cytokines, which are effective for treatment. Therefore, they are used in regenerative medicine for intractable diseases. Sheet-form mesenchymal stem cells have the advantage of being able to be directly applied to affected areas, making them easier to establish and more reliably delivered to affected areas compared with intravenous injection.

The research group aimed to enhance the therapeutic effect of mesenchymal stem cell sheets. First, they focused on the culture dishes used to cultivate these sheets. Since it had been reported that cell function changes depending on how cells are arranged, they verified the performance of sheets cultured in a unidirectionally extended state.

The temperature-responsive culture dishes used to fabricate cell sheets allow cells to adhere and proliferate when seeded at 37℃. When the temperature is lowered to 20℃, the cells detach and can be collected as cell sheets.

Therefore, the group developed temperature-responsive culture dishes by modifying them with acrylamide, a hydrophilic polymer, in stripe patterns using photopolymerization. This created alternating regions where cells can easily adhere and regions where they cannot. Using these culture dishes, they fabricated aligned cell sheets where mesenchymal stem cells adhered in a unidirectionally extended state.

They measured the amount of cytokines secreted from the aligned cell sheets they had fabricated. As a result, they found that compared with conventional mesenchymal stem cell sheets, the aligned sheets secreted much more of the therapeutically effective cytokines such as vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), and transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β).

Journal Information
Publication: Materials Today Bio
Title: Functional aligned mesenchymal stem cell sheets fabricated using micropatterned thermo-responsive cell culture surfaces
DOI: 10.1016/j.mtbio.2025.101657