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Non‐Covalently Stabilized Alginate Hydrogels as Functional Cell Scaffold Material
Author(s) -
Kühn Philipp T.,
Meijer Thomas L.,
Schiavon Irene,
van Poll Mathijs,
van Aken Joris,
Groen Swen,
Kuijer Roel,
van Kooten Theo G.,
van Rijn Patrick
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
macromolecular bioscience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.924
H-Index - 105
eISSN - 1616-5195
pISSN - 1616-5187
DOI - 10.1002/mabi.201600214
Subject(s) - self healing hydrogels , scaffold , cell encapsulation , covalent bond , polyelectrolyte , biomaterial , tissue engineering , chemistry , chemical engineering , nanotechnology , materials science , polymer , biomedical engineering , polymer chemistry , organic chemistry , medicine , engineering
Biopolymers are an attractive class of compounds for being used in biomedical applications as they are widely available from biomass. Their drawback is the lack of mechanical stability and the ability to tune this properly. Covalent chemical cross‐linking is an often used approach but it limits usability due to legislation as well as the need of advanced and specialized knowledge by end users such as clinicians. Here, increased and tunable mechanical properties are achieved of alginate‐based hydrogels with non‐covalent approaches using linear polyethyleneimine (LPEI) as a polyelectrolyte rather than only multivalent metal ions (Ca 2+ ). Gel stiffness increases with increasing LPEI content. Gel morphology changes from a thin fibrous mesh for alginate‐Ca 2+ to thicker fibrous networks when LPEI is introduced. The gels are able to efficiently release encapsulated small molecular dyes and the gels are able to host cells. For the cell encapsulation human skin fibroblasts (HSkF) and human bone marrow‐derived mesenchymal stem cells (hBM‐MSC) are used. HSkF can be successfully incorporated without diminished viability while the matrix components and gel preparation method are not compatible with hBM‐MSC. The newly developed alginate‐based system is regarded as a potential candidate for wound dressing materials.