Abstract

Microstructured 3D Cell Culture Scaffolds

Maria Tenje, Senior Lecturer, Uppsala University

Pharmaceutical research uses millions of experimental animals annually in pre-clinical trials to evaluate drug delivery of new drug candidates. These experiments are extremely expensive and sometimes not so accurate. There is therefore a need to develop reliable in vitro models of human biological barriers of interest for drug delivery, such as the blood-brain barrier and the gastro-intestinal tract. In this work, we show the micropatterning of 3D cell culture scaffolds serving as the basis of in vitro models of biological barriers. We are investigating the use of natural hydrogels to serve as the culture scaffold for cells of the biological barriers and we have developed methods to ensure a controlled thickness and lateral resolution on the microscale, i.e. the same length scale as the cells to be cultured. In this presentation we will show our latest results on cells cultured in micropatterned 3D scaffolds.