Nanoporous Materials influence cellular behaviour

Metal-Organic-Frameworks (MOF) are nanoporous structures with highly interesting characteristics and and plentifold applications since their topology is highly variable. MOF can be anchored on surfaces leading to surface-MOFs or SURMOFs. SURMOFs, in turn, can be transformed to polymeric structures by metal extraction and are then named SURGELs. Nanoporous SURGELs are suitable for applications in medicine and biology such as in liposomes, micelles, dendrimeres, nanogels and more. A new approach aims at using modfied SURGELs in a bioinstructive way which is why the work group is trying to use SURGELs for the directed differentiation of eukaryotic cells (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Directed differentiation of cells on loaded SURGELs.