Bioactivated protein-based porous microcarriers for tissue engineering applications

Microcarriers are commonly used in tissue engineering applications as they provide a large surface area for cell attachment. However, limited research has been done on ovalbumin (OVA), which is a relatively cheap protein found in avian egg white. Hence, in our current study OVA is fabricated into porous microcarriers and the effect of different OVA to alginate ratios on the properties of OVA microcarriers was investigated. Subsequently, in order to further improve cell-material interactions, the extracellular matrix (ECM) material isolated from the human lipoaspirate material was conjugated with the porous OVA microcarriers using carbodiimide chemistry. A waste-to-resource strategy was employed to obtain this ECM material from the human lipoaspirate material, which typically is discarded after surgery. This study illustrates the possibility of obtaining ECM material using a physical decellularization method as well as the novel application of ECM material as a coating to confer bioactivity to protein-based microcarriers such as OVA. The incorporation of lipoaspirate-derived ECM (LpECM) into the OVA microstructure has been shown to improve mechanical strength and promote cellular growth on the microcarriers. The resulting porous OVA-LpECM hybrid microcarriers with tunable mechanical properties are examples of bioactivated porous protein-based microcarriers that can be applied in the field of tissue engineering.