Facile One‐Step Micropatterning Using Photodegradable Gelatin Hydrogels for Improved Cardiomyocyte Organization and Alignment

Abstract

Hydrogels are often employed as temporary platforms for cell proliferation and tissue organization in vitro. Researchers have incorporated photodegradable moieties into synthetic polymeric hydrogels as a means of achieving spatiotemporal control over material properties. In this study protein-based photodegradable hydrogels composed of methacrylated gelatin (GelMA) and a crosslinker containing o-nitrobenzyl ester groups have been developed. The hydrogels are able to degrade rapidly and specifically in response to UV light and can be photopatterned to a variety of shapes and dimensions in a one-step process. Micropatterned photodegradable hydrogels are shown to improve cell distribution, alignment and beating regularity of cultured neonatal rat cardiomyocytes. Overall this work introduces a new class of photodegradable hydrogel based on natural and biofunctional polymers as cell culture substrates for improving cellular organization and function.

Photodegradable Gelatin-Based Hydrogels Prepared by Bioorthogonal Click Chemistry for Cell Encapsulation and Release

“…4C and 4D, also Fig S4). This was previously reported to be a way of quickly and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 18 precisely pre-patterning a flat substrate to present topographical or directional cues to cells 42 .…”

Gelatin-based hydrogels for biomedical applications

“…This hydrogel system was used to culture a cardiomyocyte-cardiac fibroblast co-culture, which exhibited spontaneous beating in vitro. [23] Finally, Eosin Y absorbs well in the visible light spectrum with a peak absorbance at 517 nm. This fluorescent molecule was used as the chromophore of a type-II photoinitiator with triethanolamine as the co-initiator.…”

Biohybrid methacrylated gelatin/polyacrylamide hydrogels for cartilage repair

“…2b, the value of G′ for the GelMA/PAM biohybrid hydrogel was higher than that for the GelMA hydrogel and PAM hydrogel over the whole frequency range. Compared with the GelMA hydrogel and PAM hydrogel, the GelMA/PAM biohybrid hydrogel networks were dual crosslinked by both chemical crosslinkage and physical structuring of GelMA and PAM chains, 29 and therefore the GelMA-GelMA crosslinks in the GelMA hydrogel as well as PAM-PAM crosslinks in the PAM hydrogel were replaced with PAM-GelMA crosslinks in the biohybrid hydrogel, which increased the distance between the junctions in the network, leading to high elasticity. The compression tests showed that the GelMA/PAM biohybrid hydrogel had the highest compressive strength of 0.48 MPa at 60% compression strain (Fig.…”