Hydrogel is gel-like structure while scaffold is the end product of crosslinked hydrogel after freeze drying/lyophilization. Is it possible, cells to adhere & proliferate in crosslinked gel-like structure?
Depends on which type of hydrogel. Some of hydrogels such as gelatin and collagen have good cell adhesion property. Cells (especially mammalian cells) can be adhere in the gel-like structure. There are many journal articles about gelatin derivative and collagen that report about cell adhesion and encapsulation.
Cell adhesion depends both on material property and micro-architectural parameters. If natural polymers or materials such as collagen, elastin, gelatin are employing for scaffold/ hydrogel fabrication, it can improve cell adhesion. Though water encapsulation properties of hydrogels can improve cell adhesion properties, it mainly depends on the hydrogel materials. Eg: PEG diacrylate based hydrogels have inert nature, and characterized by minimum cell adhesion properties. Also various cells requires different pore size characteristics. While designing an artificial cell homing site, please consider all these factors.
Cell seeding may be more on hydrogel compared to scaffold. Hydrogel remains in imbibed form so cell adhesion, permeation will be more. Hydrogel formed from natural polymer enhances cell adhering. Scaffold prepared from synthetic polymer lacks the site needed for cell adhesion. so many times synthetic polymers were hybridized with natural polymer for getting cell adhesion site.
HI, as usual it strongly depends on your applications but according to my experience, scaffold should be better. Also, crosslinked hydrogels forming scaffold do exist. Depending on the hydrogel nature (natural or synthetic polymer) chains functionalization (coating, grafting) may favor cells adhesion and/or proliferation. Cell behavior will really depend on your polymer properties.
Of course, hydrogels are one category of scaffold wether they are freeze dried or not. Other than cell adhesion, which is specific to the hydrogel (PEG poorly cell adhesive, collagen excellent cell adhesion) it's important to consider the end point. If you are simply amplifying cells for analysis you need to be able to extract them easily while trying to maintain an appropriate phenotype. This can be problematic with highly porous materials (especially if >20 um) as extraction can be difficult. If you have a regenerative medicine or tissue engineering project the scaffolds mechanical properties are critical, as well as shape and delivery. All of these (as well as the notes from other contributors) are important considerations in any decision making process.
Depends on your project. If it is a tissue engineering or regenerative medicine project, you may want to consider scaffolds to facilitate cell migration as hydrogels may limit cell migration.
cell adhesion and proliferation over the hydrogel depends on many factor. researchers reports cross linked polymer shows higher cell adhesion and proliferation.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Molecular Biology
- Biomolecules
- Proteins