Improvement of adhesion and proliferation of mouse embryonic stem cells cultured on ozone/UV surface-modified substrates

•Surface modification to promote stem cell adhesion to polystyrene was proposed.•UV/ozone irradiation was used for surface chemistry modification of polystyrene.•Proliferation and pluripotency of ES cells can be maintained without feeder layer.

Culturing pluripotent stem cells effectively requires feeder cell layers or cell adhesion matrix coating. However, the feeder cell layers or animal-derived factors have to be removed to apply the pluripotent stem cells as resources for regenerative medicine. To enable xeno-free culture conditions, we focused on the UV/ozone surface treatment technique for polystyrene cell culture substrates to improve the adhesion and proliferation of pluripotent stem cells. In this study, as a fundamental research for the feeder- and matrix coating-free culture system for embryonic stem cells (ESCs), mouse ESCs were cultured on UV/ozone-modified polystyrene substrates without feeder layers. We observed that UV/ozone surface-modified polystyrene substrates made it possible to culture mESCs under feeder-free conditions without any chemical treatment for the substrates.