Effects of BMP-2 Patterns on Bovine Chondrocytes Adhesion and Alignment

Striped bone morphogenetic protein-2 （BMP-2） patterns are created on polystyrene （PS） surfaces by microcontact printing （μCP） to investigate the influences of the protein patterns on bovine chondrocytes behaviors. Due to the excellent ability of BMP-2 to recruit cells and the limited ability of blank PS areas to bind ceils, bovine chondrocytes preferentially attach on the protein areas, leading to formation of cell patterns and elongated cell morphologies to some degree. The BMP-2 protein stripe can guide bovine chondrocytes adhesion and alignment. The pattern dimensions can significantly affect the cell adhesion and spread. The protein stripe width mainly controls the cell elongation and orientation while the pattern spacing mainly affects the cell spread towards neighboring stripes. Therefore, the cell morphology and distribution direction can be controlled by precisely designing the pattern shapes and sizes. We believe that the present study could fred applications for surface modification of biomaterials＇ surfaces to create the bioactive patterns to control chondrocytes adhesion, spreading and even cell function. It may be helpful for the development of novel biomaterials for cartilage repair.