YIA Candidate Australasian Extracellular Vesicles Conference 2020

YIA Presentation: Micropatterned growth surface topography affects extracellular vesicle production (#22)

Colin L Hisey 1 , James Hearn 2 , Yohanes Nursalim 3 , Vanessa Chang 3 , Cherie Blenkiron 1 , Larry Chamley 3
  1. Hub for Extracellular Vesicle Investigations, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
  2. Molecular Medicine and Pathology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
  3. Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) isolated from conditioned cell culture media play a vital role in EV research around the world. However, because cells are normally cultured on smooth polystyrene surfaces as monolayers, many flasks and large amounts of culture media are often required to produce enough EVs for downstream experimentation. Furthermore, cells grown on flat substrates do not necessarily mimic their in vivo behaviour, such as breast cancer cells which have undergone the epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT). We aim to address both these issues by using microcontact printing to grow triple-negative MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells on topographically patterned surfaces which mimic the fibrous structures often found in the tumour microenvironment. We will present the fabrication of these novel growth surfaces, the cell morphological and migratory responses to them, and the relative amount of EVs harvested from cells grown on them compared to conventional growth surfaces. This approach will eventually allow researchers to tune their growth surface topographies to optimise EV production in fields outside of cancer for applications in both biomimicry and biomanufacturing.