Controlling cells and tissues with nanotopography and surface chemistry: A cross-disciplinary approach Seminar
- Time:
- 14:00
- Date:
- 20 October 2017
- Venue:
- Building 06, Room 1083
Event details
Cell behaviour (i.e. attachment, proliferation etc.) in different substrates and environments has attracted interest through the scientific community in the last years.
The results of most studies, so far, seem to have been ambiguous and no safe conclusion has been conducted. The main reason for this lack of understanding, was the complexity of the cell functionalities, the large range of the behaviour of different cells towards a surface, and towards its variabilities in nanotopography. It appears that one cannot generalize the findings from a single study to all cells, neither did anyone manage to group similar behaviours for specific cell types. In this talk the effect of nanotopography to mouse (NIH-3T3) and human fibroblast cell attachment is presented. A roughness threshold behaviour is reported for both types of cells, leading to a dramatic cell number decrease above this threshold. This behaviour is almost similar for the two types of cells, despite their differences in size and stiffness. Additionally, the effect of chemistry and topography of 2D scaffolds are compared and evaluated in terms of their effect on the viability of Neonatal rat ventricular myocytes. Finally, examples are reported and analyzed, on how surface modification methods are used to improve functionalities of scaffolds used in cardiac tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, by providing cells with the necessary chemical cues and a more in vivo-like environment.
Speaker information
Dimitrios Kontziampasis , Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering. Dr Dimitrios Kontziampasis was awarded his PhD from Materials Science and Engineering Department, University of Ioannina, with a thesis title of “Mico-nanomodification of polymers with plasma etching for bioanalytical applications”. Research was conducted in the National Center for Scientific Research “Demokritos”. After his PhD, he was awarded a visit grant from MP1101 Cost Action “Biomedical Applications of Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Technology” and visited National Institute for Laser, Plasma and Radiation Physics in Bucharest, Romania. There, he used atmospheric pressure plasma to modify surfaces to create of cell arrays. In 2014 he moved to Southampton and worked in the fabrication of dual scale scaffolds to direct the attachment, and elongation of induced pluripotent stem cell derived cardyomyocytes. In 2015 he moved to University of Leeds to work on the surface modification and structuring of particulate materials for pharmaceutical, industrial and food applications. He is currently working on the development of a novel system that can trap conformational states in the μs-ms timeframe for time resolved single particle cryo-Electron Microscopy of biological systems. Dr Kontziampasis is the author of 10 peer reviewed international journal articles, 2 peer reviewed international conference proceedings, 2 book chapters while he has 3 filed (1 granted) patents. He is a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Materials Research Society and has participated on more than 30 international conferences around the globe.