Cell-Encapsulating Hollow Collagen Microgel Beads for the Construction of Hollow Organ Tissue Model in Vitro

This paper proposes hollow collagen microgel beads capable of encapsulating cells as a model for mimicking the hollow structure of biological tissues. By using collagen as the outer layer of the beads, the encapsulated cells adhere to the inner wall of the collagen scaffold and form a hollow tissue structure. These hollow collagen microgel beads with cells can be continuously fabricated using a co-axial microfluidic device. Furthermore, we confirmed that 96% of the cells remained viable after the bead fabrication process. The hollow collagen microgel beads were then cultured for five days, during which 96% of the encapsulated cells were still alive and had formed a tissue-like structure. We believe that our hollow collagen microgel beads would have high scalability and the resulting tissues could be used for reconstructing artificial hollow organ models in vitro.Clinical Relevance- The proposed hollow collagen microgel beads enable us to construct three-dimensional tissue in the body, which can be used as a model for elucidating diseases and evaluating drug efficacy.