| 초록 |
Development of bioactive materials as 3D extracellular matrix (ECM) is one of very important fields for cell-based therapy. Particularly, hydrogel is an excellent candidate for applications in various bioengineering fields, including regenerative medicine and stem cell niche. Such hydrogel constructs containing stem cells can provide an appropriate mechanical property and a bioactive cellular microenvironment for cell survivability and differentiation. For improved tissue regeneration, many efforts have been devoted to advanced hydrogels with structure or functions that mimic targeted tissues such as vascular-shaped hydrogels encapsulating endothelial cells, engineered tissue patch gels with layer-by-layer structures that are composed of different types of cells and biomolecule-combined hydrogels. Such complex tissue engineering particularly requires more elaborate and simplified hydrogel fabrication system to reduce cell exposure time, decrease the waste of biomolecules loaded into the hydrogel during gel-formation. In this presentation we propose that the sol-gel technique is a facile and effective method for forming novel hydrogels. The incorporation of sol-gel derived silica generated in situ by sol-gel method into a polymer material allowed the forming of a hybrid hydrogel naturally under aqueous conditions at room temperature, resulting in good shape-formability and stable cell-encapsulation. Furthermore, the developed hydrogel-forming method is suitable to produce bioengineered hydrogel with tunable mechanical and physical properties as well as good biocompatibility, thus providing cell-favorable microenvironment. |
