Elaboration and evaluation of alginate foam scaffolds for soft tissue engineering

Abstract

Controlling microarchitecture in polymer scaffolds is a priority in material design for soft tissue applications. This paper reports for the first time the elaboration of alginate foam-based scaffolds for mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) delivery and a comparative study of various surfactants on the final device performance. The use of surfactants permitted to obtain highly interconnected porous scaffolds with tunable pore size on surface and in cross-section. Their mechanical properties in compression appeared to be adapted to soft tissue engineering. Scaffold structures could sustain MSC proliferation over 14 days. Paracrine activity of scaffold-seeded MSCs varied with the scaffold structure and growth factors release was globally improved in comparison with control alginate scaffolds. Our results provide evidence that exploiting different surfactant types for alginate foam preparation could be an original method to obtain biocompatible scaffolds with tunable architecture for soft tissue engineering.

Foam-Based Bionanocomposite Scaffold for Bone Tissue Engineering

“…A consensus has been established on the necessity to generate an interconnected porous structure with pore size ranging from 50 to 300 µm [11]. Among the different strategies described in the literature to generate porosity in biopolymer scaffolds, foaming techniques appear promising for tuning the porosity of the hydrogels [5]. However, this technique has never been tested with pectin to obtain scaffolds in association with nanocrystalline apatite.…”

“…The goal of this work is to evaluate the feasibility of using pectin and nanocrystalline apatite to obtain a bionanocomposite, tailorable for maxillofacial reconstruction, exhibiting all the desired biofunctional attributes of biocompatibility, bioactivity, osteoconduction/induction, and potential release ability. Foam templating has recently demonstrated its interest for the elaboration of biopolymer 3D scaffolds that can be seeded with mesenchymal stem cells for cell therapy [5]. Although promising, this technique has never been tested in presence of mineral charges, for bone applications.…”

Alginate-chitosan PEC scaffolds: A useful tool for soft tissues cell therapy

“…In particular, we (Mias et al, 2009) and others (Gnecchi et al, 2006) supported the importance of FGF produced by BM MSC in promoting tissue repair after renal (Mi as et al, 2009) and cardiac (Gnecchi et al, 2006) ischemia. Furthermore, we have already shown that MSCs encapsulated in alginate scaffolds maintain their capacity to produoe FGF2 (Trouche et al, 2010) and VEGF, FGF2, HGF, EGF, IGF 1 and G CSF after 28 days of encapsulation (Ceccaldi et al, 2012;Ceccaldi et al, 2017), and retain their initial phenotype and ability to differentiate later under a differentiating medium (Trouche et al, 2010;Ceccaldi et al, 2012).…”

Polysaccharide Based Scaffolds for Soft Tissue Engineering Applications

“…The instillation procedure via traditional hand held injections imposes a pronounced surgical stress on suspended cells [13]. Studies report that 80%–90% of transplanted cells die within the first 72 h of injection [14]. More importantly, cellular de-differentiation during in vitro propagation may alter the biosynthetic properties of autologous cells [15].…”

“…Unlike cell suspension, seeded scaffolds exhibit a more predictable transport of high density cells into the defect site [14,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26]. Therefore, it is essential that the structure and composition of scaffolds emulate the complexity of target tissue and mimic the confluent extracellular matrix (ECM).…”