Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are promising candidates for a range of tissue regeneration applications.
Adequate scaffolds are necessary for their application in vivo, where interactions between cells and the
surface material are critical. Arginine-glycine-aspartic acid tripeptides (RGD) were conjugated to
polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimers and used to pre-treat test surfaces. We demonstrate that pretreatment
with dendrimer-presented tripeptides efficiently increases MSC adhesion to a polystyrene test
surface, and that treatment effectiveness is related to how tripeptides are presented by the dendrimer to
the cell. We tested both R-G-D–dendrimer and dendrimer–R-G-D arrangements and found the former
to be optimal in terms of surface adhesion.
