The field of biomaterials has advanced significantly in the past decade. With the growing need for high-throughput manufacturing and screening, the need for modular materials that enable streamlined fabrication and analysis of tissue engineering and drug delivery schema has emerged. Microparticles are a powerful platform that have demonstrated promise in enabling these technologies without the need to modify a bulk scaffold. This building block paradigm of using microparticles within larger scaffolds to control cell ratios, growth factors and drug release holds promise. Gelatin microparticles (GMPs) are a well-established platform for cell, drug and growth factor delivery. One of the challenges in using GMPs though is the limited ability to modify the gelatin post-fabrication. In the present work, we hypothesized that by thiolating gelatin before microparticle formation, a versatile platform would be created that preserves the cytocompatibility of gelatin, while enabling post-fabrication modification. The thiols were not found to significantly impact the physicochemical properties of the microparticles. Moreover, the thiolated GMPs were demonstrated to be a biocompatible and robust platform for mesenchymal stem cell attachment. Additionally, the thiolated particles were able to be covalently modified with a maleimide-bearing fluorescent dye and a peptide, demonstrating their promise as a modular platform for tissue engineering and drug delivery applications.

中文翻译：

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开发用于药物输送和组织工程应用的模块化、生物相容性硫醇化明胶微粒平台


过去十年，生物材料领域取得了显着进步。随着对高通量制造和筛选的需求不断增长，对能够简化组织工程和药物输送方案的制造和分析的模块化材料的需求已经出现。微粒是一个强大的平台，已证明在无需修改大块支架的情况下实现这些技术的前景。这种在较大支架内使用微粒来控制细胞比例、生长因子和药物释放的构建模块范式有望实现。明胶微粒 (GMP) 是用于细胞、药物和生长因子输送的成熟平台。然而，使用 GMP 的挑战之一是在制造后对明胶进行改性的能力有限。在目前的工作中，我们假设通过在微粒形成之前对明胶进行硫醇化，将创建一个多功能平台，保留明胶的细胞相容性，同时实现制造后修饰。未发现硫醇显着影响微粒的物理化学性质。此外，硫醇化 GMP 被证明是间充质干细胞附着的生物相容性和稳健的平台。此外，硫醇颗粒能够用带有马来酰亚胺的荧光染料和肽进行共价修饰，证明了它们作为组织工程和药物输送应用的模块化平台的前景。