| abstract |
The present invention describes a method to immobilize high density of cell-specific ligands on polymeric surface for cell engineering applications. This method combines a surface-grafting polymerization procedure to yield high density of functional groups, and a chemical conjugation step to link cell-specific ligands to the surface functional groups. This surface functionalization scheme can be applied to polymeric materials in various forms, such as polymer membrane, film, fiber, hollow fiber, foam, etc. Tissue-engineering scaffolds can be functionalized with cell specific ligand in the same manner. |