An Initial Evaluation of Gellan Gum as a Material for Tissue Engineering Applications

Alan M. Smith (1) , Richard M. Shelton (1) , Yvonne Perrie (2) , Jonathan J. Harris (1)

1 University of Birmingham St Chad's Queensway
2 School of Life and Health Sciences Aston University

Alpha-modified minimum essential medium (αMEM) has been found to cross-link a 1% gellan gum solution, resulting in the formation of a self-supporting hydrogel in 1:1 and 5:1 ratios of polysaccharide: αMEM. Rheological data from temperature sweeps confirm that in addition to orders of magnitude differences in G between 1% gellan and 1% gellan with αMEM, there is also a 20C increase in the temperature at which the onset of gelation takes place when αMEM is present. Frequency sweeps confirm the formation of a true gel; mechanical spectra for mixtures of gellan and αMEM clearly demonstrate G to be independent of frequency. It is possible to immobilize cells within a three-dimensional (3D) gellan matrix that remain viable for up to 21 days in culture by adding a suspension of rat bone marrow cells (rBMC) in αMEM to 1% gellan solution. This extremely simple approach to cell immobilization within 3D constructs, made possible by the fact that gellan solutions cross-link in the presence of millimolar concentrations of cations, poses a very low risk to a cell population immobilized within a gellan matrix and thus indicates the potential of gellan for use as a tissue engineering scaffold.

Mots clés: three-dimensional; gellan; hydrogel; bone; cell viability; three-dimensional.

Alan M. Smith, Richard M. Shelton, Yvonne Perrie, Jonathan J. Harris. An Initial Evaluation of Gellan Gum as a Material for Tissue Engineering Applications. Journal of Biomaterials Applications, 2007, 22 (3), pp.241-254. ⟨10.1177/0885328207076522⟩. ⟨hal-00570778⟩