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Fabrication of agarose concave petridish for 3D-culture microarray method for spheroids formation of hepatic cells

  • Tissue Engineering Constructs and Cell Substrates
  • Original Research
  • Published:
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Abstract

Liver is one of the most important organ in the body. But there are many limitations about liver transplantation for liver failure. It is quite important to develop the xenogeneic biological liver for providing an alternation to transplantation or liver regeneration. In this paper, we proposed a method to construct a novel kind of agarose 3D-culture concave microwell array for spheroids formation of hepatic cells. Using the 3D printing method, the microwell array was fabricated with an overall size of 6.4 mm × 6.4 mm, containing 121 microwells with 400 μm width/400 μm thickness. By exploiting the Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) membranes as a bridge, we finally fabricated the agarose one. We co-cultured three types of liver cells with bionics design in the microwell arrays. Using the methods described above, the resulting co-formed hepatocyte spheroids maintained the high viability and stable liver-specific functions. This engineered agarose concave microwell array could be a potentially useful tool for forming the elements for biological liver support. After developing the complete system, we also would consider to scale up the application of this system. It will be not only applied to the therapy of human organ damage, but also to the development of disease models and drug screening models.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by funding from the the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (2014A030312013), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81470875), Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou (201604020002), Science and Technology Development Cultivation Project of Southern Medical University (C1033042), Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province (2014B020227002), Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province (2015B090903069), Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province (2015B020229002)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery II,Guangdong Provincial Research Center for Artificial Organ and Tissue Engineering, Guangzhou Clinical Research and Transformation Center for Artificial Liver, Institute of Regenerative Medicine, Zhujiang Hospital of Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, 510000, Guangdong Province, China

    Binbin Zhang, Yang Li, Gaoshang Wang, Zhidong Jia, Haiyan Li, Qing Peng & Yi Gao

  2. Department of Pharmacology, Shantou University Medical College, Shantou, 515041, Guangdong, China

    Haiyan Li

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  1. Binbin Zhang
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  2. Yang Li
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  4. Zhidong Jia
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Correspondence to Qing Peng or Yi Gao.

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Zhang, B., Li, Y., Wang, G. et al. Fabrication of agarose concave petridish for 3D-culture microarray method for spheroids formation of hepatic cells. J Mater Sci: Mater Med 29, 49 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10856-018-6058-0

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