Assessment of the Effects of Surface Potential on the Kinetics of HEK293T Cell Adhesion Behavior Using a Quartz Crystal Microbalance with Dissipation Monitoring

Cell adhesion plays a key role in biomaterial development. Self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) provide a convenient and versatile means of modifying surface properties to study how environmental cues affect the cell adhesion process. Serial ζ-potential surfaces can be realized by introducing various ratios of oppositely charged functional groups on a gold surface. A quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring (QCM-D) has advantages for examining real-time viscoelastic changes on surfaces. This surface-sensitive technique can be applied in cell adhesion studies to investigate the cell-surface interactions. In this work, HEK293T epithelial cells were used to examine the adhesion kinetics of semi-adherent cells on NH2-COOH binary SAM-modified surfaces with serial surface potential. Immunofluorescence staining was used to examine focal adhesion sites after a 4-h cell adhesion process. Combined with optical microscopy, QCM-D was used to record in situ and real-time viscoelastic and morphological chang...