Use of synthetic polymer hydrogels to prepare scaffoldless 3D tissue constructs

The use of 3-dimensional tissue cultures is gaining popularity in many fields including drug discovery, toxicity testing and tissue engineering. Currently most of the techniques used to prepare these 3D tissues are time consuming and cannot be reproduced easily. There is an urgent need to optimize the preparation of these 3D tissue cultures. This study evaluated the use of synthetic hydrogel polymers used to manufacture soft contact lenses to guide cells to form multicellular tissue-like structures. It was found that bovine chondrocytes and porcine dental pulp stem cells were able to form 3D tissue structures when placed inside a soft contact lens. Commercially available microarrays, 96 or 384 well plates manufactured using synthetic hydrogel polymers may help overcome many reproducibility issues and simplify the 3D tissue culture process.