I wanted to know if there are any models or standards in biocompatibility tests (i.e. cytotoxicity assay, proliferation assay) for hydrogels, that I can use as a basis of comparison?
ISO 10993 (especially parts 5 and 12) deals with biocompatibility of medical devices, which includes hydrogels. You may use any assay of your choice, for example, resazurin (alamarBlue) or any of the tetrazolium salts (eg. MTT). My assay of choice is MTS, as it is simple and quick and is the most sensitive of the water-soluble tetrazolium salts, as opposed to MTT, which requires cell fixation.
If performing an extraction, the ISO gives guidance about what extraction ratio to use, which is based on the surface area of the moulded material. Alternatively, the material may be placed on top of a cell monolayer and the cell death can be analysed at different distances.
Hope that helps.
As hydrogels consist of an undefined amount of water, taking biocompatibility tests with MTT is pretty hard an inaccurate, although XTT is better . That's why I believe measuring the metabolite products that are produced within the media containing the hydrogel is much more accurate, for instance the lactate dehydrogenase assay. Another method I've come up with is using DNA specific binding dyes. Well, I have thought of a more specific and accurate assay that will use the amount of fluorescent proteins produced within the cells to determine the viability/proliferation.
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