“Hydrogels for Drug Screening and Protein Delivery Applications”

Hosts: Lori Setton (WashU Biomedical Engineering), Guy Genin (WashU Mechanical Engineering)

Co-Sponsored by: The Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) and the Institute of Materials Science & Engineering (IMSE)

Dr. Zustiak’s primary research interests are in hydrogel biomaterials with emphasis on developing novel biomaterials as cell scaffolds, drug delivery devices and drug screening platforms. This presentation will focus on two main applications of hydrogels pursued by our laboratory – developing tumor spheroid models for drug screening applications and designing injectable hydrogels for the delivery of a multicomponent protein mixture.

We focus on multicellular tumor spheroids to model avascular tumors, with the goal of providing a means for predictive high-throughput drug screening to enable breakthrough cancer therapies. I will present the development of a templated hydrogel, which enabled us to grow uniform spheroid cultures directly inside a hydrogel matrix of well-defined properties. This was achieved by first fabricating cell-loaded, fast-degradable microspheres via electrospraying or microfluidics. These microspheres were then embedded in a hydrogel matrix, where they degraded, depositing the cells in uniform spheroid openings. Multicellular spheroids with a hypoxic core formed within 7-14 days upon encapsulation. Current research is aimed at comparing the cell transcriptome of matrix-grown and liquid-grown spheroids as well as the differences in spheroid behaviors and drug responses as a function of hydrogel matrix encapsulation and properties.

Co-Sponsored by: The Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Institute of Materials Science & Engineering

For inquiries contact BME@email.wustl.edu.