Development of a microdevice-based human mesenchymal stem cell-mediated drug delivery system

Cell-mediated drug delivery systems utilize living cells as vehicles to achieve controlled delivery of drugs. One of the systems features integrating cells with disk-shaped microparticles termed microdevices into cell-microdevice complexes that possess some unique advantages over their counterparts. Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) have been extensively studied as therapeutic cells and used as carrier cells for drug-loaded nanoparticles or other functional nanoparticles. This article presents the development of a microdevice-based hMSC-mediated drug delivery system for the first time. This study revealed that the microdevices could be attached to the hMSCs in a controlled and versatile manner; the produced hMSC-microdevice complexes were stable over cultivation and trypsinization, and the microdevice attachment did not affect the viability and proliferation of the hMSCs. Moreover, cultured microdevice-bound hMSCs retained their abilities to migrate on a flat surface, form a spheroid, and actively dissociate from the spheroid. These results indicate that this microdevice-based hMSC-mediated system promises to be further developed into a clinically viable drug delivery system.