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A new method for creating 3-D hydrogel scaffolds could aid in the development of new tissue and organs grown in a laboratory and prove invaluable in eye research and treatment of certain eye disorders.
Hydrogels—a substance similar to Jelly are highly flexible and absorbent networks of polymer strings that are frequently used in tissue engineering to act as a scaffold to aid cellular growth and development, including the potential to create retinas.
A new study demonstrates for the first time that it is possible to immobilize different proteins simultaneously using a hydrogel. This is critical for controlling the determination of stem cells, which are used to engineer new tissue or organs.
The retina is divided into seven layers. If you start with a retinal stem cell, it has the potential to become all of those different cell types. So immobilizing a protein which will cause their differentiation into photoreceptors or bipolar neurons or other cell types that would make up those seven different cell types.
The end result is a new hydrogel that can guide stem cell development in three-dimensions.
If all goes well, this could serve as a platform technology to look at the interaction of different cells and build tissues and organ and lead to a more fundamental understanding of cellular interaction.
