1. The role of endothelial cells in the retinal stem and progenitor cell niche within a 3D engineered hydrogel matrix.
- Author
-
Aizawa Y and Shoichet MS
- Subjects
- Animals, Cell Adhesion drug effects, Cell Aggregation drug effects, Cell Communication drug effects, Cell Differentiation drug effects, Cell Movement drug effects, Cell Proliferation drug effects, Coculture Techniques, Endothelial Cells drug effects, Endothelial Cells metabolism, Integrin alpha6beta1 metabolism, Laminin metabolism, Mice, Oligopeptides pharmacology, Sepharose pharmacology, Stem Cells drug effects, Stem Cells metabolism, Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor A pharmacology, Endothelial Cells cytology, Hydrogels pharmacology, Retina cytology, Stem Cell Niche drug effects, Stem Cells cytology, Tissue Engineering methods
- Abstract
Cell-cell interactions are critical to understanding functional tissues. A number of stem cell populations have been shown to receive key regulatory information from endothelial cells (ECs); however, the role of ECs in the retinal stem and progenitor cell (RSPC) niche has been largely unexplored. To gain greater insight into the role of ECs on RSPC fate, a three-dimensional (3D) co-culture model, incorporating cell-cell interactions, was designed by covalently-modifying agarose hydrogels with growth factors and cell-adhesive peptides in defined volumes. Therein ECs adopted tubular-like morphologies similar to those observed in vivo, but not observed in two-dimensional (2D) cultures. Unexpectedly, ECs inhibited proliferation and differentiation of RSPCs, revealing, for the first time, the possible role of ECs on RSPC fate. This 3D hydrogel scaffold provides a simple, reproducible and versatile method with which to answer biological questions related to the cellular microenvironment., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)
- Published
- 2012
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