Adhesive Sulfabetaine Polymer Hydrogels for the Sandwich Cell Culture

Nobuyuki Morimoto; Atsuki Murata; Yuta Yamamoto; Fumio Narita; Masaya Yamamoto

doi:10.1021/acsomega.3c09708

Adhesive Sulfabetaine Polymer Hydrogels for the Sandwich Cell Culture

ACS Omega. 2024 Mar 3;9(10):11942-11949. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.3c09708. eCollection 2024 Mar 12.

Authors

Nobuyuki Morimoto^{1

2}, Atsuki Murata¹, Yuta Yamamoto¹, Fumio Narita³, Masaya Yamamoto^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Processing, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, 6-6-02, Aramaki-aza Aoba, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8579, Japan.
² Department of Materials for Energy, Shimane University, 1060 Nishikawatsu, Matsue, Shimane 690-8504, Japan.
³ Department of Frontier Sciences for Advanced Environment, Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8579, Japan.
⁴ Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering,Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8579, Japan.

Abstract

Sandwich culture systems are techniques that cultivate cells by sandwiching them between the top and bottom substrates. Since the substrates can be separated, the system is expected to be applied to the construct layering of patterned cells and to the isolation of stacked cells. In this study, we prepared hydrogels composed of zwitterionic sulfabetaine polymers, poly[2-(2-(methacryloyloxyethyl)dimethylammonio)ethyl-1-sulfate] (PZBMA). The ZBMA homopolymers have been shown to form aggregates in aqueous solutions due to their intermolecular interactions. The water content of the PZBMA hydrogels in water was ∼70% regardless of N,N'-methylenebis(acrylamide), BIS, content as the cross-linker. The results indicated that the intermolecular interaction contributed more to the swelling behaviors than the chemical cross-linker. However, PZBMA hydrogels with 0.1 mol % BIS showed not only high elongation (∼850%) properties but also high adhesiveness and self-healing properties. When this PZBMA hydrogel was impregnated with collagen and subjected to sandwich culture using Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells, a three-dimensional morphology of MDCK cell aggregates was constructed. Such a sulfabetaine hydrogel is expected to be developed for regenerative medicine.