Biointerface Materials for Cellular Adhesion: Recent Progress and Future Prospects

Abstract

While many natural instances of adhesion between cells and biological macromolecules have been elucidated, understanding how to mimic these adhesion events remains to be a challenge. Discovering new biointerface materials that can provide an appropriate environment, and in some cases, also providing function similar to the body’s own extracellular matrix, would be highly beneficial to multiple existing applications in biomedical and biological engineering, and provide the necessary insight for the advancement of new technology. Such examples of current applications that would benefit include biosensors, high-throughput screening and tissue engineering. From a mechanical perspective, these biointerfaces would function as bioactuators that apply focal adhesion points onto cells, allowing them to move and migrate along a surface, making biointerfaces a very relevant application in the field of actuators. While it is evident that great strides in progress have been made in the area of synthetic biointerfaces, we must also acknowledge their current limitations as described in the literature, leading to an inability to completely function and dynamically respond like natural biointerfaces. In this review, we discuss the methods, materials and, possible applications of biointerface materials used in the current literature, and the trends for future research in this area.