Electrical stimulation, a physical stimulation which can be delivered via a conductive biomaterial interface, directs human mesenchymal stem cell (hMSC) differentiation towards different cell tissue types.[1] Electrical stimulation conditioning offers a promising approach in directing stem cell fate. Conductive biomaterials are commonly used to provide either a passively conductive substrate, or actively provide 'smart' electrical stimulation of stem cells for tissue engineering. However, the mechanisms in which cells transduce these electrical signals into specific phenotype differentiation are poorly understood, restricting the intelligent design of stimulation protocols for targeted differentiation.[2]
The charge transport between a biomaterial and a stem cell is inherently complex due to the heterogenous nature of the cell-material interface but is critical to understand in relevance to electrically sensitive components within stem cells. Here I will present my group's multidisciplinary approach to solve this challenge; immediate changes in the stem cells during and post-stimulation characterised using live cell bio-AFM for morphological and biomechanical changes, complemented with RNA-sequencing and proteomics; comparing conductive polymer biomaterials and metallic substrates. The advanced bioAFM technique delivered unprecedented intracellular biomechanical information of live cells undergoing simultaneous electrical stimulation.[3,4] This approach enables us to link biomechanical changes, gene and protein expression modulation, and charge transport in an unprecendented study into conductive biomaterials.