A device and tunable process to produce alginate hydrogel tubular structures in various configurations for 3D tissue culture
Three-dimensional (3D) cell culture is a powerful research tool for recapitulating in vivo conditions and morphology. Despite increasing numbers of commercially available 3D culture systems, many still fail to deliver the necessary chemical and morphological environments, reproducibility, sustained release of growth factors, and ability to maintain high-density cell growth.
The simple, tunable device and method, developed by University at Albany researchers, allows for the formation of alginate hydrogel tubular structures in various sizes and configurations, including microtubes, microstrands, microfibers, and microribbons. The technology provides a simple and versatile way to culture cells in 3D microtubular structures with sustained sources of growth factors.
Considering the variety of tubular tissues in the body (e.g., tubular glands, blood vessels, trachea, gastrointestinal tract, urinary tract, neural conduit, muscle fibers), the tubular structures can be made at nano, micro, and macro scales and can be up to meters in length.
The structures can be used for culturing and/or encapsulation of cells, tissues, organoids, microorganisms, macromolecules (e.g., proteins, DNA, RNA, lipids, polysaccharides), exsomes, biocatalysts, and pharmacological agents (e.g., drugs, genes, vaccines). Thus, the tubular structures can be used to develop scalable and versatile encapsulation and culturing systems.
• Tunable and scalable diameters and configurations of hydrogel tubular structures
• Reproducible tubular structure formation and cell culture conditions
• Wide variety of applications
• 3D cell culture, including culturing of organoids, such as lentoids
• Drug delivery
• Vaccines
• Cryopreservation
• Fermentation
• Biocatalysis
US Application Published: 18/633,107
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20240350712A1/en?oq=18%2f633%2c107