Synthetic Polymers Provide a Robust Substrate for Functional Neuron Culture

Synthetic Polymers Provide a Robust Substrate for Functional Neuron Culture:

Synthetic polymeric substrates for in vitro neuron culture are identified via a high throughput approach. Polymeric substrates are shown to be superior to the current gold standard laminin, showing high levels of neuron and progenitor cell attachment, with the substrate significantly promoting progenitor cell maturation with remarkably high expression of neuron‐related biomarkers in the absence of serum.

Abstract

Substrates for neuron culture and implantation are required to be both biocompatible and display surface compositions that support cell attachment, growth, differentiation, and neural activity. Laminin, a naturally occurring extracellular matrix protein is the most widely used substrate for neuron culture and fulfills some of these requirements, however, it is expensive, unstable (compared to synthetic materials), and prone to batch‐to‐batch variation. This study uses a high‐throughput polymer screening approach to identify synthetic polymers that supports the in vitro culture of primary mouse cerebellar neurons. This allows the identification of materials that enable primary cell attachment with high viability even under “serum‐free” conditions, with materials that support both primary cells and neural progenitor cell attachment with high levels of neuronal biomarker expression, while promoting progenitor cell maturation to neurons.