Cell transplantation is a promising therapy for a myriad of debilitating diseases; however, current delivery protocols using direct injection result in poor cell viability. We demonstrate that during the actual cell injection process, mechanical membrane disruption results in significant acute loss of viability at clinically relevant injection rates. As a strategy to protect cells from these damaging forces, we hypothesize that cell encapsulation within hydrogels of specific mechanical properties will significantly improve viability. We use a controlled in vitro model of cell injection to demonstrate success of this acute protection strategy for a wide range of cell types including human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC), human adipose stem cells, rat mesenchymal stem cells, and mouse neural progenitor cells. Specifically, alginate hydrogels with plateau storage moduli (G') ranging from 0.33 to 58.1 Pa were studied. A compliant crosslinked alginate hydrogel (G'=29.6 Pa) yielded the highest HUVEC viability, 88.9% ± 5.0%, while Newtonian solutions (i.e., buffer only) resulted in 58.7% ± 8.1% viability. Either increasing or decreasing the hydrogel storage modulus reduced this protective effect. Further, cells within noncrosslinked alginate solutions had viabilities lower than media alone, demonstrating that the protective effects are specifically a result of mechanical gelation and not the biochemistry of alginate. Experimental and theoretical data suggest that extensional flow at the entrance of the syringe needle is the main cause of acute cell death. These results provide mechanistic insight into the role of mechanical forces during cell delivery and support the use of protective hydrogels in future clinical stem cell injection studies.

Neural progenitor cell (NPC) culture within 3D hydrogels is an attractive strategy for expanding a therapeutically-relevant number of stem cells. However, relatively little is known about how 3D material properties such as stiffness and degradability affect the maintenance of NPC stemness in the absence of differentiation factors. Over a physiologically-relevant range of stiffness from ~0.5–50 kPa, stemness maintenance did not correlate with initial hydrogel stiffness. In contrast, hydrogel degradation was both correlated with, and necessary for, maintenance of NPC stemness. This requirement for degradation was independent of cytoskeletal tension generation and presentation of engineered adhesive ligands, instead relying on matrix remodeling to facilitate cadherin-mediated cell-cell contact and promote β-catenin signaling. In two additional hydrogel systems, permitting NPC-mediated matrix remodeling proved to be a generalizable strategy for stemness maintenance in 3D. Our findings have identified matrix remodeling, in the absence of cytoskeletal tension generation, as a previously unknown strategy to maintain stemness in 3D.

The use of biomaterials, such as hydrogels, as neural cell delivery devices is becoming more common in areas of research such as stroke, traumatic brain injury, and spinal cord injury. When reviewing the available research there is some ambiguity in the type of materials used and results are often at odds. This review aims to provide the neuroscience community who may not be familiar with fundamental concepts of hydrogel construction, with basic information that would pertain to neural tissue applications, and to describe the use of hydrogels as cell and drug delivery devices. We will illustrate some of the many tunable properties of hydrogels and the importance of these properties in obtaining reliable and consistent results. It is our hope that this review promotes creative ideas for ways that hydrogels could be adapted and employed for the treatment of a broad range of neurological disorders.

The design of bioactive materials allows for tailored studies probing cell-biomaterial interactions; however, relatively few studies have examined effects of ligand density and material stiffness on neurite growth in 3D. Elastin-like proteins (ELPs) have been designed with modular bioactive and structural regions to enable the systematic characterization of design parameters within 3D materials. To promote neurite outgrowth and better understand the effects of common biomaterial design parameters on neuronal cultures, we here focused on cell-adhesive ligand density and hydrogel stiffness as design variables for ELP hydrogels. With the inherent design freedom of engineered proteins, these 3D ELP hydrogels enabled decoupled investigation into the effects of biomechanics and biochemistry on neurite outgrowth from dorsal root ganglia (DRG). Increasing the cell-adhesive RGD ligand density from 0 to 1.9 × 107 ligands/μm3 led to a significant increase in the rate, length, and density of neurite outgrowth, as quantified by a high-throughput algorithm developed for dense neurite analysis. An approximately two-fold improvement in total neurite outgrowth was observed in materials with the higher ligand density at all time-points through 7 days. ELP hydrogels with initial elastic moduli of 0.5, 1.5, or 2.1 kPa and identical RGD ligand densities revealed that the most compliant materials led to the greatest outgrowth, with some neurites extending over 1800 μm by day 7. Given the ability of ELP hydrogels to efficiently promote neurite outgrowth within defined and tunable 3D microenvironments, these materials may be useful in developing therapeutic nerve guides and the further study of basic neuron-biomaterial interactions.