The development of complex and large 3D vascularized tissue constructs remains the major goal of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine (TERM). To date, several strategies have been proposed to build functional and perfusable vascular networks in 3D tissue-engineered constructs to ensure the long-term cell survival and the functionality of the assembled tissues after implantation. However, none of them have been entirely successful in attaining a fully functional vascular network. Herein, we report an alternative approach to bioengineer 3D vascularized constructs by embedding bioinstructive 3D multilayered microchannels, developed by combining 3D printing with the layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly technology, in photopolymerizable hydrogels. Alginate (ALG) was chosen as the ink to produce customizable 3D sacrificial microstructures owing to its biocompatibility and structural similarity to the extracellular matrices of native tissues. ALG structures were further LbL coated with bioinstructive chitosan and arginine–glycine–aspartic acid-coupled ALG multilayers, embedded in shear-thinning photocrosslinkable xanthan gum hydrogels and exposed to a calcium-chelating solution to form perfusable multilayered microchannels, mimicking the biological barriers, such as the basement membrane, in which the endothelial cells were seeded, denoting an enhanced cell adhesion. The 3D constructs hold great promise for engineering a wide array of large-scale 3D vascularized tissue constructs for modular TERM strategies.
The layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly technology has been widely used to functionalize surfaces and precisely engineer robust multilayered bioarchitectures with tunable structures, compositions, properties, and functions at the nanoscale by resorting...
Dendrimers are powerful synthetic macromolecular architectures for a wide variety of bioapplications owing to their unique and superior features, including monodispersity, well-defined and highly branched architecture, multivalency, tunable size and...
DNA is one of the most exciting biomolecules in nature for developing supramolecular biofunctional nanoarchitectures owing to the highly specific and selective interactions between complementary Watson-Crick base pairing. Herein, simple and one-pot synthetic procedures have been implemented for producing a library of DNA nucleobase derivatives endowed with reactive functional groups for bioconjugation and crosslinking strategies with other (bio)molecules. Purine and pyrimidine molecules have been regioselectively NÀ H functionalized either via N-alkylation, N-allylation, N-propargylation or Michael-type reactions and structurally characterized. The influence of the reaction conditions was assessed and discussed. The in vitro biocompatibility of the native and nucleobase derivatives was evaluated by culturing them with human fibroblasts, revealing their cytocompatibility. The library of nucleobase derivatives holds great promise for being coupled to different biomolecules, including biopolymeric materials, lipids, and peptides, thus potentially leading to modular supramolecular nanobiomaterials for biomedicine.
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