Investigating the effects between tissue scaffolds and simulated tumor microenvironments.

• Main Author: Lee, Jia Min.
• Other Authors: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/53918
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Tissue scaffolds have the potential to be used for creating three dimensional (3D) tumor model constructs and for bioengineering therapeutic implants. These technologies necessitate contact of the tissue scaffold with the tumor microenvironment. As such, we simulated different aspects of a tumor microenvironment, namely, i) intra-tumoral pH and ii) intra-tumoral cellular heterogeneity, and investigated their interactive effects with hydrophobic, biocompatible and biodegradable tissue scaffolds. We examined the effects of an in vitro acidic environment that mimics the tumor microenvironment on polycaprolactone scaffold over a period of 30 days. The results showed no significant changes in material properties at low pH conditions over a period of thirty days, thereby suggesting potential stability of the scaffold in low pH tumor microenvironments. We next examined the effects of hydrophobic biocompatible polylactic acid (PLA) scaffolds on a heterogeneous A375 cancer cell population. The results showed that hydrophobic PLA scaffold was able to induce a homogenous amoeboid-like round-shaped cell population in contrast to a heterogeneous spindle-shaped and round-shaped adherent cell population when A375 cells were grown on hydrophilic polystyrene surfaces. We showed that a majority of these PLA-induced amoeboid-like cells were viable through live/dead staining and alamarblue® staining. These homogenous amoeboid-like cells had 95.4% viability. These results might have implications for tumor 3D modeling and tumor therapeutic implant design and fabrication.