Lizana-Vasquez Gaby D, Arrieta-Viana Luis F, Mendez-Vega Janet, Acevedo Aldo, Torres-Lugo Madeline
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, Mayagüez 00682, Puerto Rico.
Polymers (Basel). 2022 Oct 17;14(20):4379. doi: 10.3390/polym14204379.
The use of tailored synthetic hydrogels for in vitro tissue culture and biomanufacturing provides the advantage of mimicking the cell microenvironment without issues of batch-to-batch variability. To that end, this work focused on the design, characterization, and preliminary evaluation of thermo-responsive, transparent synthetic terpolymers based on N-isopropylacrylamide, vinylphenylboronic acid, and polyethylene glycol for cell manufacturing and in vitro culture applications. Polymer physical properties were characterized by FT-IR, H-NMR, DLS, rheology, and thermal-gravimetric analysis. Tested combinations provided polymers with a lower critical solution temperature (LCST) between 30 and 45 °C. Terpolymer elastic/shear modulus varied between 0.3 and 19.1 kPa at 37 °C. Cellular characterization indicated low cell cytotoxicity on NIH-3T3. Experiments with the ovarian cancer model SKOV-3 and Jurkat T cells showed the terpolymers' capacity for cell encapsulation without interfering with staining or imaging protocols. In addition, cell growth and high levels of pluripotency demonstrated the capability of terpolymer to culture iPSCs. Characterization results confirmed a promising use of terpolymers as a tunable scaffold for cell culture applications.
使用定制的合成水凝胶进行体外组织培养和生物制造具有模仿细胞微环境的优势，且不存在批次间差异问题。为此，本研究聚焦于基于N-异丙基丙烯酰胺、乙烯基苯硼酸和聚乙二醇的热响应性、透明合成三元共聚物的设计、表征及初步评估，用于细胞制造和体外培养应用。通过傅里叶变换红外光谱（FT-IR）、氢核磁共振（H-NMR）、动态光散射（DLS）、流变学和热重分析对聚合物的物理性质进行了表征。测试的组合得到了临界溶解温度（LCST）在30至45°C之间的聚合物。三元共聚物在37°C时的弹性/剪切模量在0.3至19.1 kPa之间变化。细胞表征表明对NIH-3T3细胞的细胞毒性较低。对卵巢癌模型SKOV-3和Jurkat T细胞的实验表明，三元共聚物具有细胞包封能力，且不干扰染色或成像方案。此外，细胞生长和高水平的多能性证明了三元共聚物培养诱导多能干细胞（iPSCs）的能力。表征结果证实了三元共聚物作为细胞培养应用中可调谐支架的前景。
