Chan, Hon Fai Zhang, Ying Ho, Yi-Ping Chiu, Ya-Ling Jung, Youngmee Leong, Kam W. 2024-01-20T11:01:12Z 2024-01-20T11:01:12Z 2021-09-05 2013-12-10 2045-2322 https://pubs.kist.re.kr/handle/201004/127338 An attractive option for tissue engineering is to use of multicellular spheroids as microtissues, particularly with stem cell spheroids. Conventional approaches of fabricating spheroids suffer from low throughput and polydispersity in size, and fail to supplement cues from extracellular matrix (ECM) for enhanced differentiation. In this study, we report the application of microfluidics-generated water-in-oil-in-water (w/o/w) double-emulsion (DE) droplets as pico-liter sized bioreactor for rapid cell assembly and well-controlled microenvironment for spheroid culture. Cells aggregated to form size-controllable (30-80 mu m) spheroids in DE droplets within 150 min and could be retrieved via a droplet-releasing agent. Moreover, precursor hydrogel solution can be adopted as the inner phase to produce spheroid-encapsulated microgels after spheroid formation. As an example, the encapsulation of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSC) spheroids in alginate and alginate-arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (-RGD) microgel was demonstrated, with enhanced osteogenic differentiation further exhibited in the latter case. English NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP EMBRYOID BODY FORMATION STEM-CELLS HEPATOCYTE SPHEROIDS MICROFLUIDIC SYSTEM DIFFERENTIATION CULTURE SCAFFOLD SIZE MICROTISSUES HYDROGELS Rapid formation of multicellular spheroids in double-emulsion droplets with controllable microenvironment Article 10.1038/srep03462 1 SCIENTIFIC REPORTS, v.3 SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 3 scie scopus 000328125700001 2-s2.0-84890589120 Multidisciplinary Sciences Science & Technology - Other Topics Article EMBRYOID BODY FORMATION STEM-CELLS HEPATOCYTE SPHEROIDS MICROFLUIDIC SYSTEM DIFFERENTIATION CULTURE SCAFFOLD SIZE MICROTISSUES HYDROGELS