Investigation of interaction between quartz nanostructures and human cell lines for tissue engineering

Control of interaction between nanostructures and living cells is important for tissue engineering. The topography and hydrophilicity of nanotextured surfaces can provide information on the in vitro interactions between cells and the surrounding environment, which is of great importance in bio-applications. This study proposes a reactive ion etching (RIE) to texture the quartz surfaces with 5 and 10 nm surface roughnesses. The interaction of human cell lines (human breast cancer cells, MCF-7, and human dermal microvascular endothelial cells, HDMVEC) with the nanostructured surfaces exhibited different levels of morphogenesis when the cells adhered on the bare and nanotextured quartz surfaces. The chemical composition of the surfaces were characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and results showed that cells preferred to grow on hydrophilic surfaces with hydroxyl groups. Moreover, the cellular processes, such as adhesion and spreading, were affected by the combination of physical and chemical properties of the surface, namely, surface topology and hydrophilicity. These results demonstrated the potential applications of quartz nanostructure surfaces with high microscopic image quality in tissue engineering for controlling cell growth via appropriate surface modifications.