Discipline: Biological Sciences
Subcategory: Biomedical Engineering
Session: 2
Room: Exhibit Hall A
Mashunda Longmire - Alabama State University
Co-Author(s): Komal Vig, Alabama State University, Montgomery, AL
Tissue engineering has developed as a new system for repairing damaged or diseased tissues to overcome the limitations of current therapies. Hydrogels are gaining a lot of use in biomedical applications for wound healing, cartilage and bone regeneration due to their biocompatibility and similar properties to natural tissues. Our goal in this project was to grow Keratinocytes on alginate hydrogels to mimic the skin tissue. Alginate hydrogels (2%) were synthesized by crosslinking using 2% calcium chloride. Cell viability and cell proliferation of each hydrogel was evaluated using MTT over a course of 15 days. The MTT assay showed an increase in cell growth and viability by 80% up to 15 days. Bright-field pictures confirmed the growth of Fibroblasts on the alginate hydrogels. This project was successful in growing Fibroblasts on alginate hydrogels to mimic skin tissue. Future work will be to co-culture Fibroblasts and Keratinocytes on the same hydrogel over a course of 15 days.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): This work was supported by NSF-EIR (CBET- 1831282) to Dr. Komal Vig (PI) and NSF-HBCU-UP (HRD-1911660) to Dr. Shree Singh & Dr. Komal Vig
Faculty Advisor: Komal Vig, komalvig@alasu.edu
Role: In this project, I performed all assays and experiments.