Corning Cell Culture Surfaces

Corning Surfaces

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Corning® Cell Culture Surfaces

Corning offers a variety of modified polystyrene surfaces for the binding or covalent immobilization of cells, proteins, nucleic acids, and other types of biomolecules. Corning also offers Transwell® permeable supports that use polytetrafluoroethylene, polycarbonate and polyethylene terephthalate membranes as cell growth surfaces. This guide will focus on the five polystyrene surfaces (Table 1) that are used for cell culture:

Table 1. Corning® Cell Culture Surfaces

Corning Surface	Binding Interaction	Sample Properties
Untreated polystyrene	Hydrophobic	Significantly reduces the attachment of most cells
Ultra Low Attachment coated polystyrene	Hydrophilic and nonionic	Hydrogel layer prevents the cell attachment
Ultra-Web™ Synthetic Surfaces	Mildly hydrophilic and ionic	3-D nanofibrillar surface promotes more in vivo-like cell growth
Standard tissue culture treated polystyrene	Hydrophilic and ionic (negatively charged)	Allows cell attachment and binding to polystyrene
Corning® CellBIND® modified polystyrene	Hydrophilic and ionic (negatively charged)	Improves cell attachment and binding to polystyrene
Poly-D-lysine coated polystyrene	Hydrophilic and ionic (positively charged)	Improves cell attachment and binding to polystyrene

Overview

Figure 1. Polystyrene can be surface modified by the addition of a variety of different chemical groups, breaking the carbon chain backbone or opening the benzene ring (not shown).

Cell attachment and spreading onto the surface of a culture vessel is critical for the growth of anchorage-dependent cells. Cells attach and grow well on glass; furthermore, glass is clear and allows direct microscopic observation of attached cells. As a result, Pyrex� glass was the material of choice for cell culture applications until the 1960�s when plastic culture vessels became available.

Most of these early plastic vessels were made from polystyrene, a long carbon chain polymer with benzene rings attached to every other carbon. Polystyrene was chosen because it has excellent optical clarity, is easy to mold and is relatively inexpensive. However, it also has one significant drawback - it is a very hydrophobic (nonwettable) polymer to which cells have difficulty attaching. Fortunately, the surface of polystyrene can be easily modified by a variety of chemical (sulfuric acid) and physical (corona discharge, gas-plasma or irradiation) methods (Hudis, 1974; Amstein and Hartman, 1975; Curtis et al., 1983; Ramsey et. al., 1984). Using these methods, hydroxyl, ketone, aldehyde, carboxyl and amine groups can readily be grafted onto the polymer (Figure 1). These groups modify the surface characteristics changing the uncharged hydrophobic surface into a more ionic hydrophilic surface. Corning offers a wide variety of these surface treatments on its polystyrene culture vessels (see Table 2).

Table 2. Corning® cell culture vessel surface selection chart

Surface Type Products

Flasks Dishes Multiple Well Plates Microplates Roller Bottles CellSTACK® Chambers CellCube® Chambers Culture Tubes

Ultra Low Attachment Surface x x x x x

Ultra-Web™ Synthetic Surface x x

Tissue Culture Treated x x x x x x x x

Corning® CellBIND® Surface x x x x x x

Poly-D-lysine Coated

x

Untreated x
x

x

Polystyrene can also be modified through chemical reactions to allow the covalent attachment of a variety of reactive groups that can be used for the subsequent covalent immobilization of biomolecules. For additional information, please check the references.