Micro- and Nano-topography as Biomechanical Cues for Cornea Regeneration

Extracellular nanotopography and substrate stiffness provide vital signal to regulate cell behaviors. The understanding and control of the biomechanical cues would be the key in designing tissue engineering device such as artificial cornea graft. Cornea is a highly organized tissue with distinct structure in each of the corneal epithelial, stromal and endothelial layers. Nano-scaled structure plays an important role in the functional and structural support of these layers. Our previous studies show that nanotopography can significantly influence cellular behavior ranging from morphological changes to differentiation, and the cell responds to nanotopography as a function of feature sizes. We hypothesize that nano-scaled structure substrate which mimics the microenvironment of each layer could enhance the function and the regeneration of the cornea. The cell behaviors of cornea epithelial cells, stromal cells and endothelial cells were examined on different micro- and nano-topographical patterns. Different substrate topographies were found to significantly influence their morphology, cell area, proliferation rate, protein expression and ECM production. Our results demonstrated that topography is an important component of the biomechanical cues that can be used to mimic the microenvironment of the cornea, and the optimization of size and geometry could enhance the functional regeneration of the tissue.