Evaluating Synthetic Peptide Mimics for Biomimetic Materials

Abstract

Interactions between epithelial cells and their surroundings are important for cell migration, healing, and many other applications. Integrin-based adhesion occurs with the extracellular matrix (ECM), while homotypic cadherin adhesion occurs between adjacent cells in the tissue. Integrin adhesion is commonly induced in biomaterials by coating a surface with collagen or other ECM proteins. However, this traditional type of biomaterial can pose problems, as wound healing occurs via the stronger cadherin-based adhesion rather than integrin-based interactions. Thus, surfaces coated with E-cadherin are useful as biomimetic materials for a wide range of applications, especially prosthetics and implants. The purpose of this work is to evaluate the ability of synthetic peptides, which would be cheaper, more stable, and more versatile, to mimic E-cadherin in biomaterial surface coatings. Five synthetic peptides were chosen, each fused to mussel adhesive protein for simplified surface binding. Tissue migration assays were performed to determine collective cell behavior on polystyrene coated with these mimics, E-cadherin, collagen as a positive control, and uncoated polystyrene as a negative control. Cells were nearly stationary on E-cadherin coated surfaces, while there was a large amount of cellular migration on surfaces coated with collagen. The migration behavior on surfaces coated with the peptide mimics was faster than the migration on E-cadherin, but slower than the migration on collagen. These preliminary results need more work for validation, but they suggest that the peptide mimics are able to form some, but not enough homotypic cadherin adhesions to effectively mimic E-cadherin coated surfaces, and more work needs to be done before they can be effectively applied to biomimetic materials.