Development of a scaffold composed of a hydrogel particle monolayer for tissue regeneration

On a hard scaffold like a conventional culture dish, the development of cytoskeleton is different from that observed in tissues and organs. We focused on the softness and the elasticity of a scaffold. In this study, a soft scaffold was prepared by assembling hydrogel particles in a 2D form and cross-linking among these particles to obtain a particle monolayer. The free-standing particle monolayer and the particle monolayer, which was fixed on a polystyrene dish, were used for the cell cultures. Cells hardly adhered on the front side of both particle monolayers. On the other hand, all the seeded cells adhered on the back side. As the scaffold became softer, cell-cell interactions appeared to be stronger. At a density of approximately 50,000cells/cm², cells easily formed a packed monocellular sheet on the fixed particle monolayer, whereas a multicellular sheet was observed on the free-standing particle monolayer. Since this particle monolayer has a potential not only to form a 2D structure, but also a 3D structure of cells, we expect this will be a novel scaffold for tissue regeneration.