Fabrication And Cell Culture Applications of Core-Shell Hydrogel Fibers Composed of Chitosan/Dna Interfacial Polyelectrolyte Complexation And Calcium Alginate: Straight And Beaded Core Variations.

Core-shell hydrogel fibers are widely used in cell culture applications. We present a simple and rapid method for fabricating core-shell hydrogel fibers, consisting of straight or beaded core fibers, for cell culture applications. The core fibers were prepared using interfacial polyelectrolyte complexation (IPC) with chitosan and DNA. Briefly, two droplets of chitosan and DNA were brought in contact to form an IPC film, which was dragged to prepare an IPC fiber. The incubation time and DNA concentration were adjusted to prepare straight and beaded IPC fibers. The fibers with Ca 2+ were immersed in an alginate solution to form calcium alginate shell hydrogels around the core IPC fibers. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of core-shell hydrogel fibers with IPC fiber cores. To demonstrate cell culture, straight hydrogel fibers were applied to fabricate hepatic models consisting of HepG2 and 3T3 fibroblasts, and vascular models consisting of human umbilical vein endothelial cells and 3T3 fibroblasts. To evaluate the effect of co-culture, albumin secretion and angiogenesis were evaluated. Beaded hydrogel fibers were used to fabricate many size-controlled spheroids for fiber and cloning applications. We believe that this method can be widely applied in tissue engineering and cell analysis. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.