Galactosylated surface is an attractive substrate for hepatocyte culture because of the specific interaction between the galactose ligand and the asialoglycoprotein receptor on hepatocytes. In this study, we described a scheme to achieve high density of immobilized galactose ligands on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) surface by first surface-grafting polyacrylic acid on plasma-pretreated PET film under UV irradiation, followed by conjugation of a galactose derivative (1-O-(6'-aminohexyl)-D-galactopyranoside) to the grafted polyacrylic acid chains. A high galactose density of 513 nmol/cm(2) on the PET surface was used in this study to investigate the behavior of cultured hepatocyte. This engineered substrate showed high affinity to fluorescein isothiocyanate-lectin binding. Primary rat hepatocytes, when seeded at a density of 2 x 10(5) cells/cm(2), attached to the galactosylated PET substrate at a similar efficiency compared with collagen-coated substrate. The hepatocytes spontaneously formed aggregates 1 day after cell seeding and showed better maintenance of albumin secretion and urea synthesis functions than those cultured on collagen-coated surface.
Copyright 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res 67A: 1093-1104, 2003