Embryonic stem (ES) cells are pluripotent cells with the ability to differentiate into all specialized cell types, making them a very promising foundation for stem cell-based regenerative therapeutics. Unfortunately, several obstacles have hindered the progress in the development of ES cell-based therapies. Perhaps the most debilitating hurdle is the lack of a reliable and robust cell differentiation system making it quite difficult to produce homogeneous and large scale cellular populations of a specific lineage. The present paper describes our work in using monolayers of gold nanoparticles to control the chemical environment for the growth of embryoid bodies (EBs), an intermediate state prior to the induction of lineage specific differentiation. We find these monolayers can be made directly within the commercial culture plates used for cell culturing. It is also possible to achieve surface functionalization with a wide variety of molecules (such as thiols, amine compounds, peptides). Through this method, the transparent nature of the monolayers enables the use of optical microscopy to monitor the stem cell culturing process and spectroscopic characterization with a plate reader can be used to screen for a variety of experimental conditions. Current protocols do not generate EBs with uniform size and shape, which is attributed to the lack of a robust differentiation strategy. Our preliminary experiments indicate that hydrophobic polymers like PDMS not only induce the uniform formation of cell aggregates but also may play a supporting role in the proliferation and development of EBs. We find that functionalized gold nanoparticle monolayers provide better defined surfaces in which to study the critical role of protein adsorption and control of subsequent cell attachment.

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