Electric Field Assisted Microfluidic Platform for Generation of Tailorable Porous Microbeads as Cell Carriers for Tissue Engineering |
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| Authors: | Marco Costantini Jan Guzowski Paweł J. Żuk Pamela Mozetic Simone De Panfilis Jakub Jaroszewicz Marcin Heljak Mara Massimi Maxime Pierron Marcella Trombetta Mariella Dentini Wojciech Święszkowski Alberto Rainer Piotr Garstecki Andrea Barbetta |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Chemistry, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy;2. Tissue Engineering Lab, Università Campus Bio‐Medico di Roma, Rome, Italy;3. Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland;4. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA;5. Department of Biosystems and Soft Matter, Institute of Fundamental Technological Research, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland;6. Center for Life Nano Science IIT@Sapienza, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Rome, Italy;7. Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland;8. Department of Life, Health and Environmental Sciences, University of L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy;9. Telecom Physique Strasbourg, Illkirch‐Graffenstaden, France |
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| Abstract: | Injection of cell‐laden scaffolds in the form of mesoscopic particles directly to the site of treatment is one of the most promising approaches to tissue regeneration. Here, a novel and highly efficient method is presented for preparation of porous microbeads of tailorable dimensions (in the range ≈300–1500 mm) and with a uniform and fully interconnected internal porous texture. The method starts with generation of a monodisperse oil‐in‐water emulsion inside a flow‐focusing microfluidic device. This emulsion is later broken‐up, with the use of electric field, into mesoscopic double droplets, that in turn serve as a template for the porous microbeads. By tuning the amplitude and frequency of the electric pulses, the template droplets and the resulting porous bead scaffolds are precisely produced. Furthermore, a model of pulsed electrodripping is proposed that predicts the size of the template droplets as a function of the applied voltage. To prove the potential of the porous microbeads as cell carries, they are tested with human mesenchymal stem cells and hepatic cells, with their viability and degree of microbead colonization being monitored. Finally, the presented porous microbeads are benchmarked against conventional microparticles with nonhomogenous internal texture, revealing their superior performance. |
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| Keywords: | cell carriers emulsion templating high internal phase emulsion (HIPE) microfluidics porous microbeads |
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