Improvement of adhesion and proliferation of mouse embryonic stem cells cultured on ozone/UV surface-modified substrates

Culturing pluripotent stem cells effectively requires feeder cell layers or cell adhesion matrix coating. However, the feeder cell layers or animal-derived factors have to be removed to apply the pluripotent stem cells as resources for regenerative medicine. To enable xeno-free culture conditions, we focused on the UV/ozone surface treatment technique for polystyrene cell culture substrates to improve the adhesion and proliferation of pluripotent stem cells. In this study, as a fundamental research for the feeder- and matrix coating-free culture system for embryonic stem cells (ESCs), mouse ESCs were cultured on UV/ozone-modified polystyrene substrates without feeder layers. We observed that UV/ozone surface-modified polystyrene substrates made it possible to culture mESCs under feeder-free conditions without any chemical treatment for the substrates.