Hydrogels for 3D cell culture
A special issue of Gels (ISSN 2310-2861).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2022) | Viewed by 2715
Special Issue Editors
Interests: peptide self-assembly; rheology; structure-property relationships; hydrogels; cell culture; tissue engineering; drug delivery
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: biomaterials; hydrogels; extracellular matrix; tissue engineering; regenerative medicine; mesenchymal stromal cells; lung bioengineering
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The study of diseases and new therapies is being hampered by the limitations of using the available preclinical animal models. In vitro models, on the other hand, do not generally reflect the complexity of the cellular microenvironment found in vivo, as they are commonly two-dimensional cell cultures on top of hard substrates. Hence, there is a growing interest in mimicking the microenvironment of cells in native tissues by culturing them within three-dimensional soft scaffolds. Among the wide range of biomaterials that are being used for this purpose, hydrogels are gaining popularity due to some of their specific characteristics.
Hydrogels can be developed from multiple sources, including the extracellular matrix of decellularized organs and tissues, and their physicho-chemical properties can be tuned by adjusting the preparation protocol. Moreover, in certain developments, cells can be mixed with the pregel prior to crosslinking the hydrogel, thus speeding up the preparation of the cultures. Finally, with the evolution of bioprinting technologies, cell-laden hydrogels can be used as bioinks to fabricate high-complexity three-dimensional structures.
Thus, this Special Issue on “Hydrogels for 3D cell culture” welcomes original research articles in the different topics related with the development, characterization and applications of hydrogels for three-dimensional cell biology, including the use of new biomaterial-related technologies as well as the development of novel in vitro models based on three-dimensional hydrogels.
Prof. Dr. Aline Miller
Dr. Jorge Otero
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- Scaffolds for tissue engineering
- Extracellular matrix
- 3D bioprinting
- Disease modelling
- Mechanobiology
- Cell-matrix interactions
- Biomaterials
- Tunable hydrogels
