An Initial Evaluation of Gellan Gum as a Material for Tissue Engineering Applications

Abstract

Alpha-modified minimum essential medium (MEM) has been found to cross-link a 1% gellan gum solution, resulting in the formation of a selfsupporting hydrogel in 1:1 and 5:1 ratios of polysaccharide: MEM. Rheological data from temperature sweeps confirm that in addition to orders of magnitude differences in G 0 between 1% gellan and 1% gellan with MEM, there is also a 20 C increase in the temperature at which the onset of gelation takes place when MEM is present. Frequency sweeps confirm the formation of a true gel; mechanical spectra for mixtures of gellan and MEM clearly demonstrate G 0 to be independent of frequency. It is possible to immobilize cells within a threedimensional (3D) gellan matrix that remain viable for up to 21 days in culture by adding a suspension of rat bone marrow cells (rBMC) in MEM to 1% gellan solution. This extremely simple approach to cell immobilization within 3D constructs, made possible by the fact that gellan solutions cross-link in the presence of millimolar concentrations of cations, poses a very low risk to a cell population immobilized within a gellan matrix and thus indicates the potential of gellan for use as a tissue engineering scaffold.

Controlling the rheology of gellan gum hydrogels in cell culture conditions

“…In order to form strong, durable hydrogels cations are used, with divalent cations creating stronger gels than monovalent cations. It has been previously shown however, that the range and concentration of ionic species present in Dulbecco's Modified Eagles Media (DMEM) ( Table 1) are sufficient for gellan gelation and therefore provides a very simple method of 3D cell immobilisation within a thermoreversible and non-cytotoxic hydrogel [9] [10] [11].…”

Control of the pore architecture in three-dimensional hydroxyapatite-reinforced hydrogel scaffolds

“…In addition to their use as scaffolds or bioreactors, reinforced hydrogels that can endure significant mechanical loads are expanding their potential application in drug delivery systems, actuators and artificial muscles, sensors and conductors, photoresponsive gels, cosmetics and food applications [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39]. The two hydrogels employed in this work to fabricate the scaffolds, agarose [40][41][42] and gellan [43][44][45][46], besides their traditional uses, have recently gained a new appreciation in the biomaterials and drug delivery research fields.…”

Injectable gellan gum hydrogels with autologous cells for the treatment of rabbit articular cartilage defects

“…16 Gellan gum has been originally proposed by our group 17 as a new biomaterial for cartilage tissue engineering applications, yet recent studies can be found on the same application 18 and on the general use of gellan gum for tissue engineering. 19 In our previous works, it has been used to encapsulate both human nasal and articular chondrocytes in vitro, and has been tested in vivo by subcutaneous implantation in nude mice with human articular chondrocytes. [20][21][22] In this work, autologous cells [adipose stem cells (ASC) articular chondrocytes (AC)] were combined with gellan gum and injected in rabbit knee full thickness size defects.…”