Acrylic Acid-RGD as a Biomimetic Surface Modifier for Poly(ethylene terephthalate)

INTRODUCTION　Biomaterials play an importantrole in human disease- treatmentand healing〔1,2〕.Due to the good mechanical property,PET is used to the coating of artificial heartvalve,the film of mending hearts and artificial vessel etc〔3〕.But the imperfection isthe low capability of surface hydrophile leading to the high static and low water ad-sorption〔4〕.In the application,traditional artificial cardiovascular materials( e.g.PET) have blood coagulation,alexin- activation and other…

Acrylic Acid-RGD as a Biomimetic Surface Modifier for Poly(ethylene terephthalate)

The development of the blood compatibility is important to biomaterials.The attachment of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) on substrates that had been covalently grafted with the cell adhesion peptides Arg Gly Asp(RGD) was investigated. The immobilization of the peptide sequences at the surfaces of biomaterials, such as poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET), is difficult due to an absence of functional groups to support covalent attachment. It is demonstrated a novel method to overcome this problem, by attach the RGD to acrylic acid(AAC), which immobilizes the sequence through adsorption at the PET surface. When coated by AAC RGD, the human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) seeded upon the modified PET showed a marked increase in spreading over unmodified PET. The peptides were grafted using two steps: conjugation of AAC with PET film; reaction with PET AAC and immobilization of cell binding peptides RGD. The RGD grafted surface was characterized by X ray photoelectron spectroscopy(XPS) and contact angle measurements. Cell spreading is observed by optional microscopy and scanning electron microscope(SEM). Potentially, this is a feasible method of surface modification that can design many different types of biomaterials with a variety of biomolecules.