The Next Generation Cell Adhesive Materials: Dual Mechanism beta-Amino Acid Polymers Promoting Cell Adhesion

Cell adhesion has tremendous impact on the function of culture platforms and implants. Cell adhesive proteins and peptides have been extensively used for decades to promote cell adhesion, however, their application suffered from their easy enzymatic degradation, difficulty in large scale preparation and expensiveness. To develop the next generation cell adhesive materials, we mimicked the cell adhesion functions and mechanisms of RGD and KRSR peptides and designed cell adhesive cationic-hydrophobic amphiphilic beta-amino acid polymers that are stable upon proteolysis and easily prepared in large scale at low cost. The optimal polymer strongly promoted cell adhesion, using preosteoblast cell as a model, by following dual mechanisms that were independent of sequence and chirality of the statistic copolymer. Our strategy opened new avenues in designing the next generation cell adhesive materials and may guide future studies and applications.