Understanding relationships between mammalian cells and their environment
Current research aims at addressing two separate questions, using in vitro approaches:
Do silver nanoparticles affect the intestinal function, in particular in relation with the inflammatory process?
Engineered nanomaterials, i.e. anthropogenic products, have, at least, one of their dimensions lower than 100 nm. Spherical nanoparticles, currently distributed over ca. 750 products, are heavily present in agro-food industry and therefore may gain access to the human gastro-intestinal tract. Among them, silver nanoparticles are widely used, largely related to their anti-bacterial properties. At very high doses, they may induce acute toxicity, whilst at low doses, but over very long durations, they could modulate intestinal inflammation, but in a process affected by the nutritional conditions.
Is it possible to construct “smart culture surfaces” to be used as innovative biomaterials to promote the adhesion and proliferation of mammalian cells and to regulate their differentiation?
Stem cell based technologies currently constitute attractive therapeutic approaches able to address some particular disorders. Nevertheless, given that a limited amount of stem cells can be isolated from donors, the in vitro expansion is almost always required to achieve sufficient amounts of cells for therapeutic treatments. For biosafety reasons, the cultivation of human cells to be used for clinical applications should be performed in the absence of any products from animal origin. In this context, our work aims at assessing new self-assembling peptides presenting bioactive motifs (derived from RGD sequence, collagen type I, fibronectin and laminin) within their structure as candidates for in vitro cultivation of human stem cells for therapeutic applications. We also develop new micro-structured supports to favour cultivation of 3D spheroids of human cells.
Our experimental approach uses cultured animal cells. We have developed different cell culture systems appropriate to our projects. They are based on specially designed biomaterials and synthetic culture media, suitable to promote optimal cell adhesion and proliferation and, if appropriate, cell differentiation. Current systems uses, on one hand, Caco-2 cells, in mono- or co-cultures, as models of the human intestinal mucosa and, on the other hand, human adipose derived stem cells, as a model of large scale expansion of these cells.