Diosángeles Soto Véliz

Laboratory of Paper Coating and Converting

diosangeles.sotoveliz@abo.fi

Co-operation partners: Center for Functional Materials (FUNMAT, Åbo Akademi University), The Cell Stress Lab (Åbo Akademi University), The Cell Physiology Lab (Åbo Akademi University), Department of Electronics Design (EKS, Mid Sweden University)

In this project, we aim to understand the influence of minerals on cell behaviour. Minerals are versatile materials capable of controlling the physicochemical properties of a substrate, including the cues influencing cell-decision making. The hypothesis is that minerals will influence actively cell behaviour during substrate-cell interactions either by surface properties, or by ion-induced cell signalling. However, the limitations of current cell culture platforms leave a gap in the information that can be acquired from cell responses. This missing knowledge is key to unravelling the mysteries behind cell fate and the mineral-cell interactions. Our collaborations allow us to study cell responses ranging from viability, migration, intracellular structure, stress, to calcium signalling. At the same time, our expertise in coating and printing techniques gives us the opportunity to integrate minerals with other approaches, such as hydrophobic patterning, into an improved cell culture platform to study mineral-cell interactions. By elucidating and expanding the knowledge on these interactions, we could design in the future an instructive tuneable platform that better resembles a biologically relevant environment.

The following figure shows the morphological changes (vimentin in red, nuclei in blue) induced on fibroblasts by two different kinds of calcium sulphates (CS2H2O, CS325M) capable of releasing calcium ions.

Publication list:

Soto Veliz, D., Luoto, J. C., Pulli, I., and Toivakka, M. (2018); The influence of mineral particles on fibroblast behaviour: a comparative study; Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces; Vol. 167C, pp. 239-251 (Impact Factor = 3,887) (DOI 10.1016/j.colsurfb.2018.04.013)