3D Aerohydrogel Scaffolds for Brain Tissue Engineering and In Vitro Neuroscience

The development of 3D scaffolds addresses a critical gap in neural tissue modeling by mimicking the physiological architecture in brain cell culture. This is a key challenge to improve the reliability of in vitro assays and reduce animal testing, but also mandatory for the successful engineering of neural tissues in the future. Recently various types of applicable scaffolds have been applied for 3D cell cultures, which are typically porous hydrogels or fibrous mats produced by electrospinning. These scaffold materials oftentimes have a 3D structure limiting the ingrowth of cells and the diffusion of biophysical factors throughout the material. In this study, we show the capability of Aerohydrogels, fabricated via initiated chemical vapor deposition, to allow biophysical communication throughout the material in a spatially divided brain cell coculture of microglia and astrocytes. The recently developed Aerohydrogels have an ultralow density and mechanically stable 3D hollow fibrous structure. The analysis of Interleukin inflammatory pathways shows the protective influence of astrocytes within the coculture by intercellular communication. The findings support the great applicability of the newly applied Aerohydrogels in 3D brain cell coculture and relevant analysis methods like live cell imaging, cell viability assays, or gene expression. This successful establishment allows more dedicated future applications and optimization of Aerohydrogels in neural tissue modeling.