Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 19
High-Throughput Screening of Stem Cell
Self-Renewal and Differentiation on
Nanomaterials
Perry T. Yin
1
, Tae-Hyung Kim
2, 3
, Jeong-Woo Choi
3
, and Ki-Bum Lee
1,2
1
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, NJ, USA
2
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey,
Piscataway, NJ, USA
3
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Sogang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Introduction
Stem cells are immature cells that have the capacity to not only self-renew but, depending on
their tissue of origin, also differentiate into specialized cells or all cells of the body. As such,
the concept of stem-cell transplantation, wherein stem cells can potentially repair, restore,
and regenerate diseased or damaged cells, has become increasingly attractive and may lead
to the treatment of a variety of otherwise incurable diseases, including neurodegenerative
diseases, cardiovascular diseases, osteoarthritis, macular degeneration, and diabetes [1].
Even though there is still a long way to go before the clinical potential of stem-cell therapies
can be fully realized, there are a number of procedures that are currently undergoing Food
and Drug Administration approved clinical trials, and bone-marrow transplantation has
already been approved [2]. This is due, in part, to the extraordinary advances that are taking
place in the fields of cellular and molecular biology. However, nanomaterials are also gaining
increasing attention as tools or platforms to understand and control microenvironmental
signals and as novel methods to track and guide transplanted stem cells [3]. Specifically,
since their inception, nanomaterials have become an exceedingly hot topic with far reaching
applications in all fields of study, including tissue engineering, drug delivery, electronics,
energy, and sensing. These nanomaterials can have novel electronic, optical, magnetic, and
structural properties that cannot be obtained from either individual molecules or from bulk
materials. As a result, by precisely tuning these unique features in terms of their physico-
chemical interaction with biological systems, specific cell signals can be modulated to
promote stem-cell self-renewal or stem-cell differentiation [4].
From a practical standpoint, while understanding and controlling stem-cell behaviors is
essential, having the ability to determine the cell type as well as monitor the self-renewal and
differentiation of these stem cells in a high-throughput, real-time, and noninvasive manner
under various conditions (e.g.,
in vitro, in vivo
, and on nanomaterials) is also crucial for the
successful scale-up and application of stem-cell therapies in the clinic [5]. Currently, there
are a variety of biochemical assays that are available for the characterization of stem cells.
For example, reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), Northern and
