Abstract
Today, cell therapy is known as an important tool in the treatment of chronic diseases where cells lose their normal function. Immunoisolation systems using microencapsulation or PEGylation have been developed to evade the problem of rejection by the immune system. The aim of the present study was to investigate a combination of microencapsulation and PEGylation methods in coating mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) to determine its effect in reducing the host’s immune response. Therefore, methoxy polyethylene glycol (mPEG) binding on alginate–trimethyl chitosan (TMC) microcapsules was investigated using FTIR. Furthermore, survival of the microencapsulated mESCs was confirmed using AO/PI staining and MTT assays. In addition, the effect of mESCs co-cultured with foreign lymphocytes was evaluated. Overall, interleukin-2 (IL-2) secretions as a response of the immune system revealed that mESCs microencapsulation in alginate–TMC–PEG, reduced the immune system response. The results suggested that IL-2 secretion was reduced to 62% at seventh day.
Highlights
Cell therapy is an effective method in transplantation medicine
It shows that there are several differences between the spectra of alginate, alginate–trimethyl chitosan (TMC) and alginate–TMC–methoxy polyethylene glycol (mPEG) microcapsules that confirm the attachment of TMC and mPEG on the alginate and alginate–TMC microcapsules, respectively
MTT assay results indicated that three layers of alginate, TMC and mPEG are biocompatible for MSCs
Summary
Cell therapy is an effective method in transplantation medicine. It is a multidisciplinary field between immunology, biomaterials and regenerative medicine. The main objective of cell therapy is to replace the function of injured tissues (Hernández et al 2010). Existing obstacles in obtaining optimum populations of specific cell lines for cell therapy limit the clinical cell transplantation. Stem cells, including pluripotent embryonic stem cells (ESCs), have high potential for cell therapy; subsequently to overcome the existing limitations of donor cells. Microencapsulation is a process by which the biologically active materials are enclosed within micro-spherical and semi-permeable containers of 0.2–3.0 mm in diameter (Paredes Juarez et al 2014; Al-Rammah 2014; Azadi et al 2016). Alginate is an appealing material that has been widely used for cell encapsulation (Wang et al 2009)
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