Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells Encapsulated in a Hydrogel System via Bioorthogonal Chemistry for Liver Regeneration.

Liver tissue engineering is going to be an effective treatment for end-stage liver disease. In this work, we distributed bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) into a fast-forming hydrogel system to develop a liver-mimicking construct for liver regeneration. The advantage of this hydrogel system was that this BMSC-encapsulating hydrogel could be formed via a bioorthogonal reaction between 2-cyanobenzothiazole and cysteine within several seconds. Thereafter, we explored the morphology, biocompatibility, and expressions of hepatic differentiation markers of this hydrogel system. These results illustrated that this system could provide a suitable niche for BMSC proliferation and differentiation, which could aid in future biomedical research of liver regeneration.