Spongy hydrogel capsules as ideal immunoprotective system for cell encapsulation

It was shown that the living cell inclusion inside bulk alginate hydrogel matrix is a good method to protect them from external environment. But a lot of unsolved problems derived from this technical procedure when the cells, suspended inside the hydrogel matrix, are subjected to mechanical stress during the crosslinking process of polymer solution. To avoid this unfavourable compression on the cell surface, a new spongy alginate hydrogel matrix was made. To test this new spongy capsule performance, fibroblasts were included in this new spongy matrix. With these experiments it was showed that the cell growth inside these new hydrogel sponges, compared with a cell growing inside a conventional hydrogel bulk matrix, was very different.