Tag Archives: scaffolds

Combining chitosan, agarose, and protein gelatine with clay nanotubes to create scaffolds for tissue engineering

Russian scientists have published work on clay nanotube-bipolymer composite scaffolds according to an April 29, 2016 news item on ScienceDaily,

Scientists combined three biopolymers, chitosan and agarose (polysaccharides), and a protein gelatine, as the materials to produce tissue engineering scaffolds and demonstrated the enhancement of mechanical strength (doubled pick load), higher water uptake and thermal properties in chitosan-gelatine-agarose hydrogels doped with halloysite [a clay mineral and a naturally occurring nanotube].

An April 29, 2016 Kazan Federal University (Russia) press release on EurekAlert, which originated the news item, provides more detail and context,

The fabrication of a prototype tissue having functional properties close to the natural ones is crucial for effective transplantation. Tissue engineering scaffolds are typically used as supports which allow cells to form tissue-like structures essentially required for the correct functioning of the cells under the conditions close to the three-dimensional tissue.

Chitosan, a natural biodegradable and chemically versatile biopolymer, has been effectively used in antibacterial, antifungal, anti-tumour and immunostimulating formulations. To overcome the disadvantages of pure chitosan scaffolds such as mechanical fragility and low biological resistance, chitosan scaffolds are typically doped with other supporting compounds which allow for mechanical strengthening, thus yielding ?omposite biologically resistant scaffolds.

Agarose is a galactose-based backbone polysaccharide isolated from red algae, having remarkable mechanical properties which are useful in the design of tissue engineering scaffolds.

Gelatine is formed from collagen by hydrolysis (breaking the triple-helix structure into single-strand molecules) and has a number of advantages over its precursor. It is less immunogenic compared with collagen and it retains informational signal sequences promoting cell adhesion, migration, differentiation and proliferation.

The surface irregularities of the scaffold pores due to the insoluble nanosized components promote the best adhesion of the cells on scaffold materials, while the nanoparticle fillers increase the composites’ strength. Thus, researchers doped halloysite nanotubes into a chitosan-agarose-gelatine matrix to design the implantable 3D cell scaffolds.

The resulting scaffolds demonstrate the shape memory upon deformation and have the porous structure suitable for cell adhesion and proliferation which is essential for artificial tissue fabrication. Macroscopic observations have confirmed that all the samples of scaffolds exhibited the sponge-like behaviour with the shape memory and shape reconstitution after deformation both in wet and dry states.

The swelling experiments indicated that the addition of halloysite can greatly improve the hydrophilicity and wetting of composite scaffolds. The incorporation of halloysite nanotubes into the scaffolds increases the water uptake and subsequently improves the biocompatibility. The intrinsic properties of halloysite nanotubes can be used for further improving the biocompatibility of scaffolds by the loading and sustained release of different bioactive compounds. This opens the prospect for fabrication of scaffolds with defined properties for directed differentiation of cells on matrixes due to gradual release of differentiation factors.

Experiments on two types of human cancer cells (A549 and Hep3B) show that in vitro cell adhesion and proliferation on the nanocomposites occur without changes in viability and cytoskeleton formation.

Further in vivo biocompatibility and biodegradability evaluation in rats has confirmed that the scaffolds promote the formation of novel blood vessels around the implantation sites. The scaffolds show excellent resorption within six weeks after implantation in rats. Neo-vascularization observed in newly formed connective tissue placed near the scaffold allows for the complete restoration of blood flow.

The results obtained indicate that the halloysite doped scaffolds are biocompatible as demonstrated both in vitro and in vivo. In addition, they confirm the great potential of chitosan-agarose-gelatine nanocomposite porous scaffolds doped with halloysite in tissue engineering with potential for sustained nanotube drug delivery.

For anyone interested about drug delivery and nanoparticles, there’s some interesting research profiled in my April 27, 2016 posting which describes how very few nanoparticles are actually delivered to specific sites.

Getting back to the regular program, here’s a link to and a citation for the paper on scaffolds and clay nanotubes,

Clay nanotube–biopolymer composite scaffolds for tissue engineering by Ekaterina A. Naumenko, Ivan D. Guryanov, Raghuvara Yendluri, Yuri M. Lvova, and Rawil F. Fakhrullin. Nanoscale, 2016,8, 7257-7271 DOI: 10.1039/C6NR00641H First published online 01 Mar 2016

This paper is behind a paywall.

3D microtopographic scaffolds for transplantation and generation of reprogrammed human neurons

Should this technology prove successful once they start testing on people, the stated goal is to use it for the treatment of human neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.  But, I can’t help wondering if they might also consider constructing an artificial brain.

Getting back to the 3D scaffolds for neurons, a March 17, 2016 US National Institutes of Health (NIH) news release (also on EurekAlert), makes the announcement,

National Institutes of Health-funded scientists have developed a 3D micro-scaffold technology that promotes reprogramming of stem cells into neurons, and supports growth of neuronal connections capable of transmitting electrical signals. The injection of these networks of functioning human neural cells — compared to injecting individual cells — dramatically improved their survival following transplantation into mouse brains. This is a promising new platform that could make transplantation of neurons a viable treatment for a broad range of human neurodegenerative disorders.

Previously, transplantation of neurons to treat neurodegenerative disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease, had very limited success due to poor survival of neurons that were injected as a solution of individual cells. The new research is supported by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), part of NIH.

“Working together, the stem cell biologists and the biomaterials experts developed a system capable of shuttling neural cells through the demanding journey of transplantation and engraftment into host brain tissue,” said Rosemarie Hunziker, Ph.D., director of the NIBIB Program in Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine. “This exciting work was made possible by the close collaboration of experts in a wide range of disciplines.”

The research was performed by researchers from Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey, departments of Biomedical Engineering, Neuroscience and Cell Biology, Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, and the Child Health Institute; Stanford University School of Medicine’s Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Stanford, California; the Human Genetics Institute of New Jersey, Piscataway; and the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials, Piscataway. The results are reported in the March 17, 2016 issue of Nature Communications.

The researchers experimented in creating scaffolds made of different types of polymer fibers, and of varying thickness and density. They ultimately created a web of relatively thick fibers using a polymer that stem cells successfully adhered to. The stem cells used were human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which can be readily generated from adult cell types such as skin cells. The iPSCs were induced to differentiate into neural cells by introducing the protein NeuroD1 into the cells.

The space between the polymer fibers turned out to be critical. “If the scaffolds were too dense, the stem cell-derived neurons were unable to integrate into the scaffold, whereas if they are too sparse then the network organization tends to be poor,” explained Prabhas Moghe, Ph.D., distinguished professor of biomedical engineering & chemical engineering at Rutgers University and co-senior author of the paper. “The optimal pore size was one that was large enough for the cells to populate the scaffold but small enough that the differentiating neurons sensed the presence of their neighbors and produced outgrowths resulting in cell-to-cell contact. This contact enhances cell survival and development into functional neurons able to transmit an electrical signal across the developing neural network.”

To test the viability of neuron-seeded scaffolds when transplanted, the researchers created micro-scaffolds that were small enough for injection into mouse brain tissue using a standard hypodermic needle. They injected scaffolds carrying the human neurons into brain slices from mice and compared them to human neurons injected as individual, dissociated cells.

The neurons on the scaffolds had dramatically increased cell-survival compared with the individual cell suspensions. The scaffolds also promoted improved neuronal outgrowth and electrical activity. Neurons injected individually in suspension resulted in very few cells surviving the transplant procedure.

Human neurons on scaffolds compared to neurons in solution were then tested when injected into the brains of live mice. Similar to the results in the brain slices, the survival rate of neurons on the scaffold network was increased nearly 40-fold compared to injected isolated cells. A critical finding was that the neurons on the micro-scaffolds expressed proteins that are involved in the growth and maturation of neural synapses–a good indication that the transplanted neurons were capable of functionally integrating into the host brain tissue.

The success of the study gives this interdisciplinary group reason to believe that their combined areas of expertise have resulted in a system with much promise for eventual treatment of human neurodegenerative disorders. In fact, they are now refining their system for specific use as an eventual transplant therapy for Parkinson’s disease. The plan is to develop methods to differentiate the stem cells into neurons that produce dopamine, the specific neuron type that degenerates in individuals with Parkinson’s disease. The work also will include fine-tuning the scaffold materials, mechanics and dimensions to optimize the survival and function of dopamine-producing neurons, and finding the best mouse models of the disease to test this Parkinson’s-specific therapy.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Generation and transplantation of reprogrammed human neurons in the brain using 3D microtopographic scaffolds by Aaron L. Carlson, Neal K. Bennett, Nicola L. Francis, Apoorva Halikere, Stephen Clarke, Jennifer C. Moore, Ronald P. Hart, Kenneth Paradiso, Marius Wernig, Joachim Kohn, Zhiping P. Pang, & Prabhas V. Moghe. Nature Communications 7, Article number: 10862  doi:10.1038/ncomms10862 Published 17 March 2016

This paper is open access.