Studies on sandwich culture by making use of biofunctional hydrogels as a three-dimensional culture environment

The objective of this study is to obtain the fundamental knowledge of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) cultured in a sandwiched condition with biofunctional hydrogels as a 3-D culture model. The biofunctional hydrogels were prepared through the immobilization of a cell signaling protein on poly(acrylamide) hydrogels with different crosslinking densities. As the cell signaling protein, ephrinB2 of an Eph signal ligand was employed to stimulate the osteoblastic differentiation of MSC. In this study, by making use of the specific interaction between IgG Fc domain and proteinA, the immobilization of ephrinB2-Fc in an orientation-regulated manner was designed to achieve the Eph signaling.