Abstract
A major goal in the field of regenerative medicine is to improve our understanding of how biomaterial properties affect cells of the immune system. Systematic variation of defined chemical properties could help to understand which factors determine and modulate cellular responses. A series of copolymers poly[acrylonitrile-co-(N-vinylpyrrolidone)]s (P(AN-co-NVP)) served as model system, in which increasing hydrophilicity was adjusted by increasing the content related to the NVP based repeating units (nNVP) (0, 4.6, 11.8, 22.3, and 29.4 mol%). The influence of increasing nNVP contents on cellular response of human primary monocyte derived dendritic cells (DC), which play a key role in the initiation of immune responses, was investigated. It was shown using the LAL-Test as well as a macrophage-based assay, that the materials were free of endotoxins and other microbial contaminations, which could otherwise bias the readout of the DC experiments. The increasing nNVP content led to a slightly increased cell death of DC, whereas the activation status of DC was not systematically altered by the different P(AN-co-NVP)s as demonstrated by the expression of co-stimulatory molecule and cytokine secretion. Similarly, under inflammatory conditions mimicked by the addition of lipopolysaccharides (LPS), neither the expression of co-stimulatory molecules nor the release of cytokines was influenced by the different copolymers. Conclusively, our data showed that this class of copolymers does not substantially influence the viability and the activation status of DC.
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