Porous Alginate Scaffolds Assembled Using Vaterite CaCO3 Crystals

Abstract

Formulation of multifunctional biopolymer-based scaffolds is one of the major focuses in modern tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Besides proper mechanical/chemical properties, an ideal scaffold should: (i) possess a well-tuned porous internal structure for cell seeding/growth and (ii) host bioactive molecules to be protected against biodegradation and presented to cells when required. Alginate hydrogels were extensively developed to serve as scaffolds, and recent advances in the hydrogel formulation demonstrate their applicability as “ideal” soft scaffolds. This review focuses on advanced porous alginate scaffolds (PAS) fabricated using hard templating on vaterite CaCO3 crystals. These novel tailor-made soft structures can be prepared at physiologically relevant conditions offering a high level of control over their internal structure and high performance for loading/release of bioactive macromolecules. The novel approach to assemble PAS is compared with traditional methods used for fabrication of porous alginate hydrogels. Finally, future perspectives and applications of PAS for advanced cell culture, tissue engineering, and drug testing are discussed.

Layer-By-Layer Assemblies of Biopolymers: Build-Up, Mechanical Stability and Molecular Dynamics

“…Particularly, LbL technology presented several advantages for biomedicine: (i) deposition of homogeneous films with controlled thickness, (ii) high loading capacities and controlled release of biomolecules/drugs of various nature, and (iii) coating stability under physiological conditions. This made the LbL method one of the most rapidly growing strategies for generating thin film coatings of biomedical scaffolds [ 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ], patterned surfaces [ 7 , 8 ], medical devices [ 9 , 10 ], implants [ 11 , 12 ], and a range of alternate bioapplications ( Figure 1 ); while multilayer capsules became promising nano- and micro-carriers for drug delivery applications [ 1 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ].…”

Natural-Based Biomaterials for Peripheral Nerve Injury Repair

“….) (Sergeeva et al, 2019;Singh et al, 2020). -Usable as a conduit internal filler (Pfister et al, 2008).…”

“…The physical properties of alginate make it suitable to be manufactured with several techniques such as magnetic templating ( Singh et al, 2020 ), electrospinning ( Kim and Kim, 2014 ; Chen et al, 2018 ; Kuznetsov et al, 2018 ), microfluidics ( Costantini et al, 2016 ; Hu Y. et al, 2017 ), gas foaming, emulsion freeze drying, 3D printing ( You et al, 2017 ), and hard templating on vaterite CaCO 3 crystals ( Sergeeva et al, 2019 ).…”

Naturally derived nano- and micro-drug delivery vehicles: halloysite, vaterite and nanocellulose

“…Such scaffolds are very soft (a few kPa), which opens new avenues to employ VCC for soft tissue engineering. 130…”