Hongxu Lu

• University of Technology Sydney

Cancer metastasis begins with intravasation, where cancer cells enter blood vessels through complex interactions with the endothelial barrier. Understanding this process remains challenging due to the lack of physiologically relevant models. Here, INVADE (Intravasation‐on‐µDevice), a biomimetic microfluidic platform, is presented, enabling high‐thr...

During the final stage of cancer metastasis, tumor cells embed themselves in distant capillary beds, from where they extravasate and establish secondary tumors. Recent findings underscore the pivotal roles of blood/lymphatic flow and shear stress in this intricate tumor extravasation process. Despite the increasing evidence, there is a dearth of sy...

While the effects of nanoparticle properties such as shape and size on cellular uptake are widely studied, influences exerted by drug loading have so far been ignored. In this work, nanocellulose (NC) coated by Passerini reaction with poly(2-hydroxy ethyl acrylate) (PHEA-g-NC) was loaded with various amounts of ellipticine (EPT) by electrostatic in...

Multicellular spheroids and organoids are promising in vitro 3D models in personalized medicine and drug screening. They replicate the structural and functional characteristics of human organs in vivo. Microfluidic technology and micro‐nano fabrication can fulfill the high requirement of the engineering approach in the growing research interest in...

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Drug-delivery vehicles have garnered immense interest in recent years due to unparalleled progress made in material science and nanomedicine. However, the development of stimuli-responsive devices with controllable drug-release systems (DRSs) is still in its nascent stage. In this paper, we designed a two-way controlled drug-release system that can...

Ruthenium complexes have been widely studied as potential alternatives to platinum-type anticancer drugs due to their unique medical properties such as high selectivity, strong ability to inhibit solid tumour metastasis. However, non-specific biodistribution, and weak lethality of ruthenium to cancer cells limit its use in medical application. Drug...

In the final step of cancer metastasis, tumor cells become lodged in a distant capillary bed, where they can undergo extravasation and form a secondary tumor. While increasing evidence suggests blood/lymphatic flow and shear stress play a critical role in the tumor extravasation process, there is a lack of systematic and biomechanical approaches to...

Polymeric micelles are widely used as multifunctional drug carriers of poorly water‐soluble drugs, but the role of drug loading content is often overlooked. The purpose of this study was to investigate the cellular uptake and penetration of polymeric micelles with different drug loading contents and their effects on biological activities. In this s...

To fully investigate cellular responses to stimuli and perturbations within tissues, it is essential to replicate the complex molecular interactions within the local microenvironment of cellular niches. Here, the authors introduce Alginate‐based tissue engineering (ALTEN), a biomimetic tissue platform that allows ex vivo analysis of explanted tissu...

A critical challenge of nanoparticle‐based imaging diagnosis of cancers is limited accumulation of nanoparticles at the biological target. Here, a cancer cell derived membrane coated 2D layered double hydroxides nanoparticle (CM‐PEG/MnLDH) has been developed to realize both cell‐specific targeting and deep tissue penetration for enhanced magnetic r...

Understanding how platelets can sense and respond to hemodynamic forces in disturbed blood flow and complexed vasculature is crucial to the development of more effective and safer antithrombotic therapeutics. By incorporating diverse structural and functional designs, microfluidic technologies have emerged to mimic microvascular anatomies and hemod...

Peristalsis in the digestive tract is crucial to maintain physiological functions. It remains challenging to mimic the peristaltic microenvironment in gastrointestinal organoid culture. Here, we present a method to model the peristalsis for human colon tumor organoids on a microfluidic chip. The chip contains hundreds of lateral microwells and a su...

Mammary tumor organoids have become a promising in vitro model for drug screening and personalized medicine. However, the dependency on the basement membrane extract (BME) as the growth matrices limits their comprehensive application. In this work, mouse mammary tumor organoids are established by encapsulating tumor pieces in non‐adhesive alginate....

Cellular uptake of nanoparticles plays a crucial role in cell-targeted biomedical applications. Despite abundant studies trying to understand the interaction between nanoparticles and cells, the influence of cell geometry traits such as cell spreading area and cell shape on the uptake of nanoparticles remains unclear. In this study, poly(vinyl alco...

Cell co-culture serves as a standard method to study intercellular communication. However, random diffusion of signal molecules during co-culture may arouse crosstalk among different types of cells and hide directive signal-target responses. Here, a microfluidic chip is proposed to study unidirectional intercellular communication by spatially contr...

In article number 1905572, Fan Wang and co‐workers develop near‐infrared Bessel‐beam emission saturation nanoscopy to simultaneously tackle the problems in light absorption and scattering for biological tissues, enabling the tracking of single nanoparticles inside a multicellular tumor spheroid in the depth over 55 µm with an imaging resolution of...

Cancer spheroids have structural, functional, and physiological similarities to the tumor, and have become a low‐cost in vitro model to study the physiological responses of single cells and therapeutic efficacy of drugs. However, the tiny spheroid, made of a cluster of high‐density cells, is highly scattering and absorptive, which prevents light mi...

Multicellular tumor spheroids are attracting more attention as a physiologically relevant in vitro tumor model for biomedical research. The size of spheroids is one of the critical parameters related to drug penetration and cellular responses. It remains challenging to generate a large number of gradient-sized spheroids in one culture vessel. Here,...

SI of the 'Gradient-sized control of tumor spheroids on a single chip'

Drug delivery carriers are now widely established as they can increase the therapeutic efficiency of drugs. In general, the aim in this field is to create effective carriers that have large amounts of drugs loaded in order to minimize drug carrier material that needs to be disposed of. However, there was little attention so far in the literature on...

Ovarian cancer is often diagnosed at a late stage, when disease has spread to extra-pelvic regions such as the omentum. There are limited treatment options available for women with extensive disease and tumours often relapse after current chemotherapy regimines. Therefore, novel drugs should be investigated for the treatment of ovarian cancer. A 3D...

The efficiency of nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems to accumulate in targeted tumor sites is low owing primarily to the various biological mechanisms that promote premature clearance, such as renal filtration or the mononuclear phagocyte system (MPS). Such obstacles to enhanced tumor accumulation of nanomedicines remain formidable challenges...

Glycopolymer-coated nanoparticles have attracted significant interest over the past few years, because of their selective interaction with carbohydrate receptors found on the surface of cells. While the type of carbohydrate determines the strength of the ligand-receptor interaction, the presentation of the sugar can be highly influential as the car...

Polyelectrolyte-protein complexes are widely used to deliver therapeutic proteins. Here, we present a method for imaging the release of drugs from polyion complex (PIC) micelles in 3D tumour spheroids using light-sheet microscopy. A negatively charged block copolymer was condensed with a positively charged model drug, hen egg white lysozyme (HEWL)...

Gene therapy through systemic administration is expected to offer significant therapeutic potential against intractable cancer including pancreatic cancer. One of requirement for in vivo gene therapy is the development of gene carrier with high safety, transfection ability and tumor accumulation. Bovine serum albumin (BSA)-poly(2-dimethylaminoethyl...

Polymeric nanoparticles with long circulation time hold great promise for anti-cancer drug delivery. Enhanced circulation effect of rod-like micelles has been reported, yet efficient intracellular delivery, especially their interactions with cells during endocytosis still remains inconsistent. Internalization of rod-like nanoparticles is significan...

A λ-orthogonal reaction system is introduced, where visible light induced radical thiol–ene and UV light induced NITEC (Nitrile-Imine mediated Tetrazole–Ene Conjugation) ligations are consecutively employed to fabricate and functionalize PEG-based hydrogels. The fluorescent pyrazoline cycloadducts from the NITEC reaction are exploited to visualize...

Multicellular tumor spheroid models (MCTS) are often coined as 3D in vitro models that can mimic the microenvironment of tissues. MCTS have gained increasing interest in the nano-biotechnology field as they can provide easily accessible information on the performance of nanoparticles without using animal models. Considering that many countries have...

PENAO (4-(N-(S-penicillaminylacetyl)amino) phenylarsonous acid), which is a mitochondria inhibitor that reacts with adenine nucleotide translocator (ANT), is currently being trialed in patients with solid tumors. To increase the stability of the drug, the formation of nanoparticles has been proposed. Herein, the direct synthesis of polymeric micell...

Introducing a strategy towards polymer/nanodiamond hybrids with high polymer grafting density and accessible polymer structural characterisation is of critical importance for nanodiamonds surface modification and bioagent attachment for their biomedical application. Here, we report a glycopolymer/nanodiamond hybrid drug delivery system, which was p...

Albumin-based nanoparticles have been exploited as a useful carrier for the efficient delivery of anti-cancer drugs. In this study, albendazole was encapsulated into bovine serum albumin(BSA)–polycaprolactone (PCL) conjugates and the formed nanoparticles with a size of about 100 nm were used to treat pancreatic carcinoma cells. In addition, two mor...

We introduce the light-induced collapse of single glycopolymer chains in water generating fluorescent glyco single-chain nanoparticles (SCNPs) and their subsequent functionalization onto nanodiamonds. The glycopolymer precursors are prepared by polymerizing an acetylated mannose-based methacrylate monomer followed by a deprotection and postpolymeri...

Co-delivery of two drugs in one nanoparticle is increasingly used to overcome for example multi-drug resistance in cancer therapy and therefore suitable drug carriers need to be developed. In this work, a well-known polymer based on poly(glutamic acid) (PGA) and poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), PGA-PEG-PGA, was employed as a reactive scaffold for the a...

A peptide vector consisting of nanodiamonds (NDs) and PEGylated polyglutamic acid (ND@PLGPEG-co-PLGA) has been designed and developed. The negative charges at the surface of the vector were exploited to bind a positively charged peptide drug melittin via electrostatic interaction. The surface was saturated when the weight ratio of ND@PLGPEG-co-PLGA...

Enhanced cellular uptake and efficient penetration of nanocarriers inside tumors is paramount to a successful anti-cancer therapy. While many studies have shown the important role nanoparticle shape plays in cellular uptake, no detailed conclusions on the most efficient drug carrier shape have be drawn at this stage. Here, a series of fructose-base...

Natural variations in pH levels of tissues in the body make it an attractive stimuli to trigger drug release from a delivery vehicle. A number of such carriers have been developed but achieving high drug loading combined with low leakage at physiological pH and tunable controlled release at the site of action is an ongoing challenge. Here we report...

A newly synthesised glucosamine-based monomer was able to undergo controlled polymerisation and retain amine functionality. Both the homopolymer and micellar formulations could be uptaken into Caco-2 monolayers, successfully mimicking mucoadhesive properties of native chitosan.

Albumin based nanoparticles are widely used to delivery anti-cancer drug as they promote the accumulation of drugs in tumors. Nanoparticles with surface immobilized albumin are widely described in literature, though mixed nanoparticles with systematically modified ratios between albumin and PEG-based material are less common. In this work, mixed hy...

The ruthenium complex-dichlororuthenium (II) (p-cymene) (1,3,5-triaza-7-phosphaadamantane) (RAPTA-C)-has shown to be remarkably effective at suppressing the growth of solid tumor metastases. However, poor delivery efficacy and the lack of targeting ability of the common drug delivery system pose significant obstacles to maximize the therapeutic ben...

Hollow particles have the potential for a broad range of applications, but most specifically drug delivery. However, their synthesis can be tedious, requiring techniques such as high energy input or a sacrificial template. Furthermore, loading the final capsules with drugs, catalysts or any other compound is often associated with a low loading effi...

Although micelles are commonly used for drug delivery purposes, their long-term fate is often unknown due to photo-bleaching of the fluorescent labels or the use of toxic materials. Here, we present a metal-free non-toxic non-bleaching fluorescent micelle that can address these shortcomings. A simple, yet versatile profluorescent micellar system –...

Carboxyl end-functionalized poly[poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate] [P(PEGMEMA)] and its block copolymer with gemcitabine substituted poly(N-hydroxysuccinimide methacrylate) [PGem-block-P(PEGMEMA)] are synthesized via reversible addition-fragmentation transfer (RAFT) polymerization. Then, two polymers are grafted onto the surface of a...

Prodrug (gemcitabine)-based polymer coated nanodiamonds (NDs) were fabricated by grafting onto method and strain-promoted alkyne-azide cycloaddition (SPAAC) click chemistry. The polymers were synthesized by polymerization of a gemcitabine prodrug monomer and oligoethylene glycol methyl ether acrylate (OEGMEA) using a dibenzocyclooctyne (DBCO) conta...

Paclitaxel (PTX) conjugated micelles provide a promising tool for the treatment of prostate cancer. Core-crosslinking by incorporating a disulfide bridge is a useful approach to improve the in vivo stability of polymeric micelles. This paper aims to investigate the effects of different crosslinking degrees on the anti tumor efficacy of micelles for...

Well-defined carboxyl end-functionalized glycopolymer poly(1-O-methacryloyl-2,3:4,5-di-O-isopropylidene-β-D-fructopyranose) has been prepared via reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer polymerization and grafted onto the surface of amine-functionalized nanodiamonds via a simple conjugation reaction. The properties of the nanodiamond-polym...

Cellular uptake is identified as one of the key parameters to the successful delivery of drugs into cancer cells. In this study, the effect of the ratio of negative and positive charges on a polymer on the amount of uptake is studied. Poly(methacrylic acid), prepared by RAFT polymerization, is post-functionalized with agmatine in water to various d...

While the shape effect of nanoparticles on cellular uptake has been frequently studied, no consistent conclusions are available currently. The controversy mainly focuses on the cellular uptake of elongated (i.e. filaments or rod-like micelles) compared to spherical (i.e. micelles and vesicles) nanoparticles. So far, there is no clear trend that pro...

Using proteins as the hydrophilic moiety can dramatically improve the biodegradability and biocompatibility of self-assembled amphiphilic nanoparticles in the field of nanomedicine. In this study, we fabricated and evaluated curcumin loaded albumin–polycaprolactone nanoparticles as a novel drug delivery system for prostate carcinoma therapeutics an...

An increasing amount of therapeutic agents are based on proteins. However, proteins as drug have intrinsic problems such as their low hydrolytic stability. Delivery of proteins using nanoparticles has increasingly been of the focus of interest with polyion complex micelles, prepared from charged amphiphilic block copolymer and the oppositely charge...

Statement of significance: The interest in ruthenium drugs stem from their anti-metastatic effect. In contrast to other metal-based drugs that inhibit the growth of tumor cells, ruthenium drugs seem less toxic, but have a pronounce effect on the migration of cancer cells. The ruthenium drug chosen here, RAPTA-C, is capable of inhibiting migration...

The therapeutic potency of platinum-based anticancer drugs can be substantially improved through the use of polymeric nanocarrier systems to target cancer cells efficiently. We synthesized a series of glyco-block copolymers with three different sugars able to self-assemble into nanoparticles when conjugated with 1,2-diamino-cyclopentane platinum(II...

Poly[(2-(α-d-mannosyloxy)ethyl acrylate)-block-(n-butyl acrylate)], P(ManA-b-BA), and poly[poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether acrylate]-block-(n-butyl acrylate), P(OEGMEA-b-BA), diblock copolymers were prepared by reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization. The binary mixtures of P(ManA-b-BA)/P(OEGMEA-b-BA) diblock copol...

Inspired by upregulated levels of fucosylated proteins on the surfaces of multiple types of cancer cells, micelles carrying -L-fucose and -D-glucose were prepared. A range of block copolymers were synthesized by reacting a mixture of 2'-azidoethyl-2,3,4-tri-O-acetyl--L-Fucopyranose and 1,2,3,4,6-penta-O-acetyl--d-glucopyranose (AcGlc) with poly...

Curcumin exhibits broad ground state light absorption and can act as a photoinitiator for the free radical photopolymerization of methacrylates under air upon exposure to different household LED bulbs. The effects of temperature and various additives on the photoinitiation efficiency of curcumin-based systems have been investigated. The curcumin-ba...

A series of thermo-and pH-responsive poly(methyl methacrylate)-block-poly[methacrylic acid-co-di(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate] PMMA-b-P[MAA-co-DEGMA] block copolymers were synthesized by RAFT polymerization and self-assembled into micelles. The molar ratio of MAA was altered from 0-12% in order to modulate the lower critical solution...

The 2D monolayer cell culture model is often the first step in the prediction of the success or failure of a nanoparticle-based drug delivery system. However, there is often poor translation between the 2D monolayer in vitro results and the nanoparticle-drug performance in vivo. One possible way of bridging this gap is the use of multicellular tumo...

Extracellular matrix (ECM) scaffolds have been broadly used in tissue engineering because of their versatile bioactive nature. The ECM can be derived from various tissues, organs, and cultured cells. A variety of decellularization methods have been developed to maximize the decellularization effect while minimize the effect on ECM. They include che...

A new glycomonomer 1 containing a thioacetate group in the anomeric position and mimicking the thiosugar ligand of the gold-based drug auranofin was designed and synthesized in four steps from d-glucose. Both CPADB-mediated homopolymerization and chain extension of a hydrophilic poly(OEGMEMA) macroRAFT agent were well-controlled with dispersities (...

Many attempts have been made in the application of multicellular tumor spheroids (MCTS) as a 3D tumor model to investigate their biological responses upon introduction of polymeric micelles as nanocarriers for therapeutic applications. However, the micelle penetration pathways in MCTS are not yet known. In this study, micelles (uncrosslinked, UCM)...

Fructose transporter GLUT5 is overexpressed in breast cancer cell lines, but not in healthy tissue. Micelles based on fructose showed a high uptake by breast cancer cell (MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 cells), but only negligible uptake by macrophages. As a result, drug carriers that are selective to cancer cells were created.

Novel biocompatible polyion complex micelles, containing bovine serum albumin (BSA), polymer and oligonucleotide, were synthesized as a generation of vectors for the gene transfection. Maleimide-terminated poly((N,N-dimethyl amino) ethyl methacrylate) (PDMAEMA) was prepared via reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization...

We show for the first time how polymeric nanotubes (NTs) based on self-assembled conjugates of polymers and cyclic peptides can be used as an efficient drug carrier. RAPTA-C, a ruthenium-based anticancer drug, was conjugated to a statistical co-polymer based on poly(2-hydroxyethyl acrylate) (pHEA) and poly(2-chloroethyl methacrylate) (pCEMA), which...

Inspired by the Ringsdorf model, statistical copolymers with solubility enhancers, platinum drugs and groove binders were compared. In addition, the polymer was furnished with a cell penetrating moiety using a guanidine containing polymer. A block copolymer based on poly(4-vinylbenzyl chloride) and a block carrying zwitterionic monomer prepared fro...

A new micelle delivery platform based on albumin coated nanoparticles is able to selectively deliver the payload to cancerous cells while healthy cells remain less affected. The technology is simple and can be used in a one-pot procedure.

Boronic esters are investigated as a pathway to conjugate biological molecules to polymers. Although the stability of the boronic ester was slightly dependent on the molecular weight of the polymer and the pH value, the conjugates were stable when micelles were endocytosed by cells. Only the onset of apoptosis led to cleavage of the boronic ester.

Macromolecular ruthenium complexes are a promising avenue to better, and more selective, chemotherapeutics. NAMI-A is a ruthenium(III) drug in Phase II clinical trials that has low cytotoxicity and is inactive against primary tumors. However, it displays both antiangiogenic and anti-invasive properties and has been shown to specifically target tumo...

Scaffold pore size is an important factor affecting tissue regeneration efficiency. The effect of pore size on cartilage tissue regeneration was compared by using four types of collagen porous scaffolds with different pore sizes. The collagen porous scaffolds were prepared with by using pre-prepared ice particulates that had diameters of 150-250, 2...

Macromolecular ruthenium complexes are a promising avenue to better and more selective chemotherapeutics. We have previously shown that RAPTA-C [RuCl2(p-cymene)(PTA)], with the water-soluble 1,3,5-phosphaadamantane (PTA) ligand, could be attached to a polymer moiety via nucleophilic substitution of an available iodide with an amide in the PTA ligan...

Appropriate pore structures and mechanical properties are required for scaffolds that are used for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. In this study, pre-prepared ice particulates were used as a porogen material to prepare collagen porous scaffolds with well-controlled pore structures and improved mechanical properties. Porogen ice partic...

Loss of cartilaginous phenotype during in vitro expansion culture of chondrocytes is a major barrier to the application of chondrocytes for tissue engineering. In previous study, we showed that dedifferentiation of chondrocytes during the passage culture was delayed by matrices formed by primary chondrocytes (P0-ECM). In this study, we investigated...

Direct comparison using scaffolds with a gradient pore size structure is important to investigate the effect of pore size on tissue regeneration. Collagen porous scaffolds with a pore size gradient were prepared by using pre-prepared ice particulates as a porogen material. The ice particulates had diameters of 150–250, 250–355, 355–425 and 425–500...

Ideal biomaterials for bone tissue engineering should have capability to guide osteogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells and, at the same time, to stimulate angiogenesis of endothelia cells. In this study, it was found that three Ca, Mg and Si-containing bioceramics (bredigite Ca7MgSi4O16, akermanite Ca2MgSi2O7 and diopside CaMgSi2O6) ha...

In this study, a novel technique was used for the reversible attachment of folic acid on the surface of polymeric micelles for a tumor-specific drug delivery system. The reversible conjugation is based on the interaction between phenylboronic acid (PBA) and dopamine to form a borate ester. The conjugation is fast and efficient and in-vitro experime...

Nanodiamonds (NDs) are highly promising drug carriers due to their biocompatibility, manipulable surface chemistry, and nonbleaching flourescence. In this communication, we compare the cytotoxicity of three ND-cisplatin systems in which cisplatin was incorporated via direct attachment to the ND surface, physical adsorption within a poly(oligo(ethyl...

Uptake of drug-loaded micelles by tumour cell lines can be the crucial step in the creation of an efficient drug delivery system. Crosslinking of micelles has increasingly been proposed as a pathway to create stable nanoparticles. So far, little is known how crosslinking can affect the interaction of these nanocarriers with cells. The aim of this s...

In skin tissue engineering, a three-dimensional porous scaffold is necessary to support cell adhesion and proliferation and to guide cells moving into the repair area in the wound healing process. Structurally, the porous scaffold should have an open and interconnected porous architecture to facilitate homogenous cell distribution. Moreover, the sc...

Extracellular matrix (ECM) scaffolds derived from cultured cells have drawn increasing attention for use in tissue engineering. We have developed a method to prepare cultured cell-derived ECM scaffolds by combining three-dimensional cell culture, decellularization, and selective template removal. Cell-ECM-template complexes were first formed by cul...

Porous collagen scaffolds with micropatterned structures are manufactured using preformed ice micropattern templates. The scaffolds show precisely controlled pore structures and micropattern structures of bioactive substances, which can be tethered by designing a program.

Surface chemistry is an important property of biomaterials and plays a pivotal role in the interaction between stem cells and biomaterials. Comparing the effect of the surface chemistry at the single-cell level should elucidate the mechanism of the interaction. In this study, a micropatterning method was used to investigate the electrostatic effect...

The introduction of bioactive molecules into three-dimensional porous scaffolds to mimic the in vivo microenvironment is a promising strategy for tissue engineering and stem cell research. In this study, bone morphogenetic protein-4 (BMP4) was spatially immobilized in a collagen-PLGA hybrid scaffold with a fusion BMP4 composed of an additional coll...

Micropatterning of biological cues is important for the guided formation of neuronal outgrowth and neuronal differentiation. Nerve growth factor (NGF) was micropatterned in a three-dimensional collagen sponges by using micropatterned ice lines that were composed of collagen and NGF. The micropatterned ice lines were prepared by a dispersing machine...

Angiogenesis is an important process used to guide the regeneration of functional tissues and organs. The incorporation of inductive cues into scaffolds to control angiogenesis is an attractive strategy for scaffold preparation. Four mesh-type scaffolds, including a vascular endothelial growth factor-embedded poly(d,l-lactic-co-glycolic acid) mesh,...

The loss of cartilaginous phenotype during in vitro expansion culture of chondrocytes is a major barrier for the application of cartilage tissue engineering. The use of matrices mimicking the in vivo extracellular matrix (ECM) microenvironment is anticipated to be an efficient method to suppress chondrocyte phenotype loss. In this study, we develop...

Successful regeneration of large and highly functionalized tissue and organs depends on the ability to guide blood vessel formation with three-dimensional scaffolds. Angiogenic growth factors have the potential to stimulate blood vessels in scaffolds. However, simply incorporating angiogenic growth factors in a random fashion may lead to uncontroll...

Cell-derived extracellular matrix (ECM) scaffolds have received considerable interest for tissue engineering applications. In this study, ECM scaffolds derived from mesenchymal stem cell (MSC), chondrocyte, and fibroblast were prepared by culturing cells in a selectively removable poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) template. These three types of...

The capacity to induce rapid vascular ingrowth during new bone formation is an important feature of biomaterials that are to be used for bone regeneration. Akermanite, a Ca-, Mg- and Si-containing bioceramic, has been demonstrated to be osteoinductive and to promote bone repair. This study further demonstrates the ability of akermanite to promote a...

Three-dimensional porous scaffolds play an important role in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Structurally, these porous scaffolds should have an open and interconnected porous architecture to facilitate a homogeneous cell distribution. Moreover, the scaffolds should be mechanically strong to support new tissue formation. We developed...

A micropatterned surface with different area ratios of cell-adhesive to nonadhesive surfaces was prepared by micropatterning poly(vinyl alcohol) on a polystyrene plate using photolithography. A gradient pattern of mesenchymal stem cells of different cell densities was generated by culturing the cells on a micropatterned surface. The effects of the...