Search Results

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Item
    Gelation kinetics of thiol-methylsulfone (MS) hydrogel formulations for 3D cell culture
    (Washington, D.C. : American Chemical Society, 2022) de Miguel-Jiménez, Adrián; Ebeling, Bastian; Paez, Julieta I.; Fink-Straube, Claudia; Pearson, Samuel; del Campo, Aranzazu
    Crosslinking chemistries that allow hydrogel formation within minutes are essential to achieve homogeneous networks and cell distributions in 3D cell culture. Thiol-methylsulfone (MS) crosslinking chemistry offers minutes-scale gelation under near-physiological conditions showing many desirable attributes for 3D cell encapsulation. Here we investigate the gelation kinetics and mechanical properties of PEG-based hydrogels formed by thiol-tetrazole methylsulfone (TzMS) crosslinking as a function of buffer, crosslinker structure, and degree of TzMS functionalization. Appropriate buffer selection ensured constant pH throughout crosslinking. The formulation containing cell adhesive ligand RGD and enzymatically-degradable peptide VPM gelled in ca. 4 min at pH 7.5, and stiffness could be increased from hundreds of Pascals to > 1 kPa by using excess VPM. The gelation times and stiffnesses for these hydrogels are highly suitable for 3D cell encapsulations, and pave the way for reliable 3D cell culture workflows in pipetting robots.
  • Item
    Possibilities and Limitations of Photoactivatable Cytochalasin D for the Spatiotemporal Regulation of Actin Dynamics
    (Washington, D.C. : American Chemical Society, 2020) Nair, Roshna V.; Zhao, Shifang; Terriac, Emmanuel; Lautenschläger, Franziska; Hetmanski, Joseph H.R.; Caswell, Patrick T.; del Campo, Aranzazu
    The study of the actin cytoskeleton and related cellular processes requires tools to specifically interfere with actin dynamics in living cell cultures, ideally with spatiotemporal control and compatible with real time imaging. A phototriggerable derivative of the actin disruptor Cytochalasin D (CytoD) is described and tested here. It includes a nitroveratryloxycarbonyl (Nvoc) photoremovable protecting group (PPG) at the hydroxyl group at C7 of CytoD. The attachment of the PPG renders Nvoc-CytoD temporarily inactive, and enables light-dosed delivery of the active drug CytoD to living cells. This article presents the full structural and physicochemical characterization, the toxicity analysis. It is complemented with biological tests to show the time scales (seconds) and spatial resolution (cellular level) achievable with a UV source in a regular microscopy setup