Rapid and Robust Coating Method to Render Polydimethylsiloxane Surfaces Cell Adhesive

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is a synthetic material with excellent properties for biomedical applications due to its easy fabrication method, high flexibility, permeability to oxygen, transparency, and potential to produce high resolution structures in the case of lithography. However, PDMS needs to be modified to support homogeneous cell attachments and spreading. Even though many physical and chemical methods have been developed over the last decades to increase cell-surface interaction, like plasma treatment or ECM coatings, these methods are still very time consuming, often not efficient enough, complex, and can require several treatment-steps. To overcome these issues, we present a novel, robust, and fast one-step PDMS coating method using engineered anchor-peptides fused to the cell adhesive peptide-sequence (GRGDS). The anchor-peptide attaches to the PDMS surface predominantly by hydrophobic interactions by simply dipping PDMS in a solution containing the anchor-peptide, presenting the GRGDS sequen...