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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2018 Jun 1.
Published in final edited form as: Acta Biomater. 2017 Apr 20;55:100–108. doi: 10.1016/j.actbio.2017.04.019

Figure 3.

Figure 3

(A) Primary human NP cells attached to both soft and stiff peptide functionalized acrylamide gels. All peptide functionalized gels promoted greater cell clustering than for stiff LM-111 functionalized substrates (* p<0.05, significantly different from stiff LM-111 functionalized gels) SEM are shown. (B) Representative day 4 images showing the effect of substrate stiffness and ligand for NP cell morphologies. A majority of attached cells interact to form rounded, multi-cell clusters, in comparison to cells on the stiff (14 kPa) LM-111 control showing flattened morphology with stress fiber formation (scale bar = 250 μm). (C) NP cell production of sGAG per DNA varied across peptide-functionalized substrates. As found previously, sGAG/DNA for NP cells upon soft LM-111-functionalized substrates was greater (1.6-fold) than for stiff substrates. While similar elevations in sGAG/DNA were observed for many peptide-functionalized gels, only soft gels functionalized with P678 and AG10 were associated with higher sGAG/DNA (* p<0.05, significantly greater than stiff LM-111, 2-way ANOVA, Dunnett's post hoc). SEM are shown. (D) mRNA levels for aggrecan (AGC), N-cadherin (CDH2), type I collagen (COLA1), type II collagen (COL2A1), and GLUT-1 in primary human NP cells. (*p<0.05, significantly different from stiff LM-111 functionalized polyacrylamide gels, Dunnett's post hoc). SEM are shown.