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The 2024 Professor Franz Brandstetter Prize, awarded by the Association of Supporters of the Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden (abbrev. IPF in German), has been presented to My Duyen Pham for her master's thesis titled “Cell-instructive anchor polymers for the culture of induced pluripotent stem cells”.
Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have garnered significant attention in regenerative biomedicine due to their exceptional capacity for self-renewal and differentiation into various cell types. However, their cultivation typically relies on commercially available, animal-derived matrices such as Matrigel™, which are often poorly defined, batch-specific, and carry an increased risk of immunogenic impurities—factors that make them less suitable for certain therapeutic applications. As a result, the development of fully synthetic, controllable polymer coatings has become a focal point in stem cell research.
In her thesis, My Duyen Pham focused on developing a novel, cell-instructive coating to enable the targeted cultivation of iPSCs. She utilized anchor polymer (AP) technology, originally developed at the IPF, which is based on styrene-maleic anhydride copolymers modified with polyethylene glycol (PEG) derivatives. By functionalizing the polymers with interface-oriented maleimide groups and coupling them with adhesion peptides, she created a cell-instructive coating that was suitable for a variety of cell types. However, this initial design proved insufficient for the adhesion of complex iPSCs.
To address this, Pham introduced terminal maleimide-functionalized PEG chains to the AP coating. These optimized coatings could be easily deposited from aqueous solutions through a straightforward adsorption process. She thoroughly characterized the physicochemical properties and suitability of both the original and newly designed AP coatings for iPSC culture, using a combination of spectrometric techniques, quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation measurements, and cell culture experiments.
My Duyen Pham’s research demonstrated that iPSCs could be successfully cultured on the optimized coatings while maintaining long-term stability and pluripotency. This outcome suggests that the coating provides an appropriate presentation of cell-adhesive peptides, which are essential for iPSC adhesion and function. The optimized AP technology therefore represents a significant step forward in creating cell-instructive coatings tailored to the demanding requirements of iPSC culture.
My Duyen Pham, pham@ipfdd.de
My Duyen Pham
Stephan Floss
IPF
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Biologie, Chemie, Medizin, Werkstoffwissenschaften
überregional
Forschungsergebnisse, Wettbewerbe / Auszeichnungen
Englisch
My Duyen Pham
Stephan Floss
IPF
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