3D Hydrogels Containing Interconnected Microchannels of Subcellular Size for Capturing Human Pathogenic Acanthamoeba Castellanii

Abstract

Porous hydrogel scaffolds are ideal candidates for mimicking cellular microenvironments, regarding both structural and mechanical aspects. We present a novel strategy to use uniquely designed ceramic networks as templates for generating hydrogels with a network of interconnected pores in the form of microchannels. The advantages of this new approach are the high and guaranteed interconnectivity of the microchannels, as well as the possibility to produce channels with diameters smaller than 7 μm. Neither of these assets can be ensured with other established techniques. Experiments using the polyacrylamide substrates produced with our approach have shown that the migration of human pathogenic Acanthamoeba castellanii trophozoites is manipulated by the microchannel structure in the hydrogels. The parasites can even be captured inside the microchannel network and removed from their incubation medium by the porous polyacrylamide, indicating the huge potential of our new technique for medical, pharmaceutical, and tissue engineering applications.

Automated analysis of soft hydrogel microindentation: Impact of various indentation parameters on the measurement of Young’s modulus

“…on an area of 400 mm 2 ), resulting in a PAAm film of approximately 25 μm thickness. Additionally, the hydrogel samples are swollen in double-distilled water for several days prior to the indentation measurements, which results in a further increase of the sample volume (up to 2000% [10]) and thus a further increase in thickness.…”

“…This means that using tilt-corrected AFM cantilevers could be a strategy to avoid artifacts from sample shearing (Fig 2). For details on the indenter, see supporting information of [10].…”

“…At the same time, in vitro experiments also need to consider mechanical aspects in order to properly mimic in vivo conditions. For decades, scientists have tried to create materials that mimic different extracellular environments [9, 10], as the objective to gain control over cellular behavior by manipulation of the cell’s surroundings would be of great interest for medicine, fundamental science, and tissue engineering [11, 12]. The influence of different biochemical cues, such as (very complex) protein structures or other chemical stimuli, have been extensively studied, but the influence of material mechanics on cell functions is not yet fully understood [13].…”

Status and future scope of plant-based green hydrogels in biomedical engineering

“…In this regard, there is an increasing demand for alternative strategies to effectively regenerate the damaged tissues [1]. Tissue engineering which applies biomimetic 3D scaffolds seeded by cells seems to be a promising strategy to promote the tissue repair [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. Recently, hydrogels are gained more attraction as tissue engineering scaffolds due to their similar structure to natural extracellular matrix (ECM).…”

Fused deposition modeling-based additive manufacturing (3D printing): techniques for polymer material systems

“…actuation, energy harvesting, self-healing, sensing, etc.) properties to deliver specific functionalities for the user, such as those highlighted by Yogendra et al [111], Javaid & Azvaid [109], Yogendra & Rainer [112], Sören et al [113], An et al [114], and Florian et al [115] in their work.…”