| 초록 |
Primary hepatocytes are commonly used in liver tissue engineering. Since hepatocytes rapidly lose their functions after isolation, maintenance of functionality is critical for investigation. Formation of hepatocytes in 3-D is one of the approaches and the use of hydrogels is a promising way due to their high water content, and easy tuning of their modulus to that of the native liver. This study sought to characterize heparin hydrogel as a scaffold. Importantly, heparin is abundant in liver, and has a high affinity for hepatocyte growth factor (HGF). In here, the primary hepatocytes were mixed with a prepolymer solution comprised of Hep(SH) and PEGDA. Analysis of liver-specific products revealed that the heparin gel was non-cytotoxic and promoted hepatic functions. In the future, we envision employing heparin gels as matrices for differentiation of hepatocytes and as vehicles for transplantation. This study is supported from Research Center for Biomolecular Nanotechnology at GIST. |
