Effect of Material Properties on Differentiation of Mesenchymal Stem Cells

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Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been widely used in the areas oftissue engineering and regenerative medicine due to their wide differentiation potentialinto various lineages. The stem cell/material interface involved is a complexmicroenvironment where material can direct the stem cell’s fate through its inherentproperties (such as stiffness, surface topography and/or surface chemistry, andnanoparticles themselves, etc.). Stem cells in contact with materials are able to sensetheir properties and translate parallel signaling information into stem cell lineagecommitment and differentiation. These materials can be utilized as scaffolds for tissueengineering and regenerative medicine and as nanoparticles for drug delivery or celltracking. Thus, it is of vital importance to investigate the effects of material propertieson the differentiation of MSCs to give a better design of biomaterials. With this inmind, we summarize the recent reports about the effects of materials properties (suchas stiffness, surface topography and/or surface chemistry, and nanoparticlesthemselves, etc.) on the differentiation of MSCs. We also overview a subset of thepossible mechanisms proposed to explain how the material properties affect thedifferentiation of MSCs.