| 1. |
- Lindström, Sara, et al.
(författare)
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Nanoporous titania coating of microwell chips for stem cell culture and analysis
- 2010
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Ingår i: Journal of Biomechanical Science and Engineering. - : Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers. - 1880-9863. ; 5:3, s. 272-279
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Stem cell research is today an active and promising field of research. To learn more about the biology of stem cells, technical improvements are needed such as tools to study stem cells in order to characterize them further and to gain insights to the molecular regulations of their maintenance, differentiation and identification. Common procedure when studying stem cells is to coat the surface where the stem cells are to be cultured with organic materials like matri-gel, poly-L-lysine and fibronectin. The resulting coating is usually relatively fragile and it is difficult to know if the coating is evenly distributed. In addition, these forms of coatings cannot be sterilized and re-used, but must be added as an initial, time-consuming step in the daily protocol. A microwell chip with hundreds of 500 nl wells has recently been shown to be a useful tool for stem cell culturing. This platform is here modified to facilitate and improve the coating conditions for adherent cell culture. A robust and highly porous film of TiO2 is deposited in the wells prior cell seeding. TiO2 is known to be biocompatible and provides a surface that is even and well characterized, simple to produce and re-usable. Furthermore it enables the microwell chips to be stored pre-coated for longer periods of time before use. We investigated the growth of rat mesenchymal stem cells on nanoporous titania films and found that they proliferated much faster than on conventional coatings. The combination of the robust TiO2 coating of the microwell chip enables thousands of individually separated single, or clones of, stem cells to be studied simultaneously and opens up the possibility for more user-friendly cell culturing.
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| 2. |
- Hosseini, Vahid, et al.
(författare)
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Engineered Contractile Skeletal Muscle Tissue on a Microgrooved Methacrylated Gelatin Substrate
- 2012
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Ingår i: Tissue Engineering - Part A. - : Mary Ann Liebert Inc. - 1937-3341 .- 1937-335X. ; 18:23-24, s. 2453-2465
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- To engineer tissue-like structures, cells must organize themselves into three-dimensional (3D) networks that mimic the native tissue microarchitecture. Microfabricated hydrogel substrates provide a potentially useful platform for directing cells into biomimetic tissue architecture in vitro. Here, we present microgrooved methacrylated gelatin hydrogels as a suitable platform to build muscle-like fibrous structures in a facile and highly reproducible fashion. Microgrooved hydrogel substrates with two different ridge sizes (50 and 100 [mu m) were fabricated to assess the effect of the distance between engineered myofibers on the orientation of the bridging C2C12 myoblasts and the formation of the resulting multinucleated myotubes. It was shown that although the ridge size did not significantly affect the C2C12 myoblast alignment, the wider-ridged micropatterned hydrogels generated more myotubes that were not aligned to the groove direction as compared to those on the smaller-ridge micropatterns. We also demonstrated that electrical stimulation improved the myoblast alignment and increased the diameter of the resulting myotubes. By using the microstructured methacrylated gelatin substrates, we built free-standing 3D muscle sheets, which contracted when electrically stimulated. Given their robust contractility and biomimetic microarchitecture, engineered tissues may find use in tissue engineering, biological studies, high-throughput drug screening, and biorobotics.
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| 3. |
- Ramon-Azcon, J., et al.
(författare)
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Gelatin methacrylate as a promising hydrogel for 3D microscale organization and proliferation of dielectrophoretically patterned cells
- 2012
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Ingår i: Lab on a Chip - Miniaturisation for Chemistry and Biology. - : Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). - 1473-0189 .- 1473-0197. ; 12:16, s. 2959-2969
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Establishing the 3D microscale organization of cells has numerous practical applications, such as in determining cell fate (e. g., proliferation, migration, differentiation, and apoptosis) and in making functional tissue constructs. One approach to spatially pattern cells is by dielectrophoresis (DEP). DEP has characteristics that are important for cell manipulation, such as high accuracy, speed, scalability, and the ability to handle both adherent and non-adherent cells. However, widespread application of this method is largely restricted because there is a limited number of suitable hydrogels for cell encapsulation. To date, polyethylene glycol-diacrylate (PEG-DA) and agarose have been used extensively for dielectric patterning of cells. In this study, we propose gelatin methacrylate (GelMA) as a promising hydrogel for use in cell dielectropatterning because of its biocompatibility and low viscosity. Compared to PEG hydrogels, GelMA hydrogels showed superior performance when making cell patterns for myoblast (C2C12) and endothelial (HUVEC) cells as well as in maintaining cell viability and growth. We also developed a simple and robust protocol for co-culture of these cells. Combined application of the GelMA hydrogels and the DEP technique is suitable for creating highly complex microscale tissues with important applications in fundamental cell biology and regenerative medicine in a rapid, accurate, and scalable manner.
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