Nanofibrillar cellulose wound dressing supports the growth and characteristics of human mesenchymal stem/stromal cells without cell adhesion coatings

BACKGROUND: In the field of regenerative medicine, delivery of human adipose-derived mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (hASCs) has shown great promise to promote wound healing. However, a hostile environment of the injured tissue has shown considerably to limit the survival rate of the transplanted cells, and thus, to improve the cell survival and retention towards successful cell transplantation, an optimal cell scaffold is required. The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential use of wood-derived nanofibrillar cellulose (NFC) wound dressing as a cell scaffold material for hASCs in order to develop a cell transplantation method free from animal-derived components for wound treatment. METHODS: Patient-derived hASCs were cultured on NFC wound dressing without cell adhesion coatings. Cell characteristics, including cell viability, morphology, cytoskeletal structure, proliferation potency, and mesenchymal cell and differentiation marker expression, were analyzed using cell viability assays, electron microscopy, immunocytochemistry, and quantitative or reverse transcriptase PCR. Student’s t test and one-way ANOVA followed by a Tukey honestly significant difference post hoc test were used to determine statistical significance. RESULTS: hASCs were able to adhere to NFC dressing and maintained high cell survival without cell adhesion coatings with a cell density-dependent manner for the studied period of 2 weeks. In addition, NFC dressing did not induce any remarkable cytotoxicity towards hASCs or alter the morphology, proliferation potency, filamentous actin structure, the expression of mesenchymal vimentin and extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins collagen I and fibronectin, or the undifferentiated state of hASCs. CONCLUSIONS: As a result, NFC wound dressing offers a functional cell culture platform for hASCs to be used further for in vivo wound healing studies in the future. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s13287-019-1394-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.