Development of macroporous hydrogel sponges for soft tissue organoid culture and applications

报告人：余严军 教授（新加坡国立大学）

Professor  Hanry Yu researches the interface between Mechanobiology, biomaterials  and tissue engineering, biomedical optics and image data analytics. He  published >180 journal articles, >250 conference papers, >50  patent applications; spun off 6 companies, and trained many PhD students  and postdocs with successful careers in academia and industry. He led  multiple education and research programs; and advise various agencies,  organizations and institutions. He is a handling editor of Biomaterials.

ABSTRACT：Soft  tissue organoids have found various applications in disease modelling  and drug testing. Forming organoids is relatively straightforward but  maintaining them in culture can be tricky. We had previously developed a  class of soft macroporous cellulose sponges for forming and maintenance  of liver cell spheroids. We also demonstrated its ability to preserve  the heterogeneity and complexity of patient-derived xenograft of liver  cancer. To retrieve the spheroids/organoids for applications and  characterization, we have developed a variant that is readily dissolved  with reducing agents. A liver progenitor cell differentiate rapidly in  the 3D organoid configuration. To enable high-content and higher  throughput applications in drug screening, we further developed a  transparent variant that form soft macroporous hydrogel sponge directly  in multi-well cell culture plates. These developments enable the studies  and drug testing applications at different scales.