Culturing of mouse and human cells on soft substrates promote the expression of stem cell markers

Substrate elasticity is a potent regulator of the cell state. Soft substrates have been shown to promote the homogeneous self-renewal of mouse embryonic stem cells through the down-regulation of cell-matrix tractions. We therefore investigated whether soft substrates promote the reprogramming of somatic cells into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. After retroviral infection with five factors, Oct3/4, Klf4, Sox2, Lin28 and Nanog, mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) were cultured on several artificial substrates of varying elasticity and examined for the expression of pluripotency genes. When MEFs were cultured on soft (<0.1 kPa) polyacrylamide gels coated with gelatin, the expressions of Nanog and Oct3/4 genes were higher than in cells cultured on rigid plastic dishes (∼106 kPa). The same result was obtained at higher elasticity (0.5 kPa) for adult human dermal fibroblasts (HDFa). We also examined whether reprogramming could be enhanced on soft substrates without exogenous gene introduction, finding that cells cultured on soft substrates in the presence of chemicals known to promote cell reprogramming exhibited up-regulated stem cell markers. These results suggest that controlling the substrate stiffness can enhance the initiation of cell reprogramming, which may lead to effective and reproducible iPS cell production.