[Zurück]

M. Markovic, A. Ovsianikov, V. Mironov:
"Hydrogels for 3D cell culture";
Vortrag: TERMIS-EU 2017: Personalised Therapies for Regenerative Medicine, Davos; 26.06.2017 - 30.06.2017; in: "eCM Meeting Abstracts 2017, Collection 2: TERMIS-EU 2017 Conference", eCM Conferences Open Access online periodical, (2017), ISSN: 2522-235x; Paper-Nr. 0055, 1 S.

In addition to the classical scaffold-based tissue engineering, a scaffold-free strategy, relying on the
directed tissue self-assembly with tissue spheroids or microtissues as building blocks, has been
developed within the last decade [1]. Despite much success, this approach also proved to have certain
drawbacks and faces several challenges on the way to its widespread adoption. In the meantime, there
is a growing consensus that an alternative - third strategy, based on the integration of tissue spheroids
with conventional solid scaffolds, could be a potential optimal solution [2].
A representative example of the third strategy in tissue engineering is a recently reported lockyball
construct - a tissue spheroid encaged within a highly porous microscaffold [3]. Lockyballs support
bottom-up modular tissue assembly, since the size and the porosity of microscaffolds promote spheroid
fusion, while providing high initial cell density. At the same time the microscaffolds material can be varied
independently of the tissue spheroid, enabling adjustment of the mechanical properties of the construct
and its degradation profile. In addition, microscaffolds can be designed to contain functional elements,
such as hooks allowing interlocking with neighboring microscaffolds. Two-photon polymerization (2PP)
technique, based on localized crosslinking of photopolymers induced by femtosecond laser pulses, was
used by our group to produce the first lockyballs [4]. Due to a high spatial resolution provided by 2PP,
this technique is most perspective for fabrication of microscaffolds with size is on the order of the
spheroid diameter (100-500 µm) [5].
In this contribution we review the recent reports supporting manifestation of such development. The
main principles, distinguishing elements and current challenges of this emerging third tissue engineering
strategy will be discussed.

http://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/publik_262288.pdf