Plasma-Alginate Composite Material Provides Improved Mechanical Support for Stem Cell Growth and Delivery.

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

• Level A · Stronger Clinical Evidence
• Level B · Emerging clinical evidence with positive signals
• Level C · Early human research exploring benefits
• Level D · Scientific groundwork from lab and animal studies
• Emerging · Emerging topic under active research

Abstract (original English)

Blood plasma-based products have been recently utilized in different tissue engineering applications, ranging from soft tissue repair to bone regeneration. Plasma contains fibrinogen which can be converted to an insoluble fibrin-laden gel in the presence of activated thrombin. In tissue engineering, these plasma-based materials can serve either as a three-dimensional scaffold to deliver therapeutic cells in vivo or as a growth factor-rich supply for tissue regeneration. Unfortunately, plasma-based materials are often mechanically weak and easily deformed, thus limiting their usability in harsh clinical settings. Simpler methods to create sturdier plasma-based materials are therefore needed. To this end, we hypothesized that combining alginate with plasma can create a composite plasma material with improved mechanical properties. Incorporating alginate into plasma produced composite gels with increasing bulk stiffness, as measured by rheology. Specifically, the plasma-alginate composite (PAC) gels with an alginate concentration of 2.86 mg/mL were 10-fold stiffer than pure plasma gels (11 vs 112 Pa). Interestingly, gel lysis rates were unchanged despite increasing alginate concentration (lysis time approximately 50 min). Adipose-derived stem cells cultured in the stiffer PAC gels expressed stemness markers (THY1, ENG, NT5E) at levels comparable to those in the pure plasma gels. S

Evidence level

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

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