Substrate Elasticity Governs Differentiation of Renal Tubule Cells in Prolonged Culture.

Abstract

Successful clinical tissue engineering requires functional fidelity of the cultured cell to its <i>in vivo</i> counterpart, but this has been elusive in renal tissue engineering. Typically, renal proximal tubule cells in culture have a flattened morphology and do not express key transporters essential to their function. In this article, we show for the first time that <i>in vitro</i> substrate mechanical properties dictate differentiation of cultured renal proximal tubule cells. Remarkably, this effect was only discernable after 4 weeks in culture, longer than usually reported for this cell type. These results demonstrate a new tunable parameter to optimize cell differentiation in renal tissue engineering.