ABSTRACT
Fibronectin (FN) contributes to cell adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation in various cell types. To enhance the activity of fibronectin at the sites of focal adhesion, we engineered a novel recombinant fibronectin (FNIII10) fragment connected to the peptide amphiphile sequence (PA), LLLLLLCCCGGDS. In this study, the effects of FNIII10-PA on rat mesenchymal stem cells (rMSCs) were compared with those of FNIII10. FNIII10-PA showed the prominent protein adhesion activity. In addition, FNIII10-PA showed a significantly higher effect on adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation of rMSCs than FNIII10. Taken together, the FNIII10-containing self-assembled sequence enhanced rMSCs adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation.
Subject(s)
Fibronectins/pharmacology , Mesenchymal Stem Cells/cytology , Mesenchymal Stem Cells/drug effects , Protein Engineering/methods , Animals , Cell Adhesion/drug effects , Cell Differentiation/drug effects , Cell Proliferation/drug effects , Cells, Cultured , Fibronectins/chemistry , Fibronectins/genetics , Male , Peptide Fragments/chemistry , Peptide Fragments/genetics , Rats , Rats, Sprague-Dawley , Recombinant Fusion Proteins/pharmacologyABSTRACT
Integrin-mediated cell-matrix interactions play an important role in osteogenesis. Here, we constructed a novel osteoinductive fibronectin matrix protein (oFN) for bone tissue engineering, designed to combine the integrin-binding modules from fibronectin (iFN) and a strong osteoinductive growth factor, bone morphogenetic protein-2. Compared with iFN, the purified oFN matrix protein caused a significant increase in cell adhesion and osteogenic differentiation of pre-osteoblast MC3T3-E1 cells (p < 0.05).