National Engineering Research Center for Biomaterials, Sichuan University, 29 Wangjiang Road, Chengdu 610064, China.
J Mater Chem B. 2020 Mar 11;8(10):2082-2095. doi: 10.1039/c9tb01484e.
Cell culture has become an indispensable tool to uncover fundamental biophysical and biomolecular mechanisms of cells assembling into tissues. An important advancement in cell culture techniques was the introduction of three-dimensional (3D) culture systems. In this study, the mutual fusion of chondrocyte pellets was promoted in order to produce large-sized tissue-engineered cartilage by a multiplexed 3D hanging drop culture and agarose mold method to optimize the means of cultivation. Cell proliferation, aggregation, cell morphology maintenance as well as cartilage related gene expression and matrix secretion in vitro and subcutaneous implantation models were evaluated. These results indicated that the multiplexed 3D hanging drop culture involving the fusion of small pellets into a large structure enabled the efficient production of 3D tissue engineered cartilage that was closer to physiological cartilage tissue in comparison to that of the agarose mold method.
细胞培养已成为揭示细胞组装成组织的基本生物物理和生物分子机制的不可或缺的工具。细胞培养技术的一个重要进展是引入了三维（3D）培养系统。在这项研究中，通过多重 3D 悬滴培养和琼脂糖模具方法促进软骨细胞球的相互融合，以优化培养手段，从而产生大型组织工程软骨。评估了细胞增殖、聚集、细胞形态维持以及软骨相关基因表达和基质分泌在体外和皮下植入模型中的情况。这些结果表明，涉及将小球融合成大结构的多重 3D 悬滴培养能够有效地生产更接近生理软骨组织的 3D 组织工程软骨，而不是琼脂糖模具方法。
