Continuos-Flow culture of Hepatocytes in Sugar-derivatized poly (lactide-co-glycolide) Scaffolds Prepared by Gas-foaming/salt-leaching Method

Highly open porous polymer matrices are required for high density cell seeding, efficient nutrient, and oxygen supply to the cells cultured in the three dimensional matrices. However, there are severe problems of mass transfer limitations within the cell/scaffolds culture system. Thus we hypothesize that continuos-flow culture conditioning of cells with the scaffolds may improve the cell viability and the differentiated function. In this study, we fabricated porous PLGA scaffolds by using gas-foaming/salt-leaching method as previous described. Viscous PLGA gel paste contains ammonium bicarbonate particulates, acting as a gas-foaming agent as well as a salt-leaching porogen, were cast into Teflon mold and dried. Ammonium bicarbonate salt upon contact to an acidic aqueous solution evloves gaseous ammonia and carbon dioxide by itself. And we conjugated galactose moiety [AGA; $N-(aminobuty1)-O-{\beta}-D-galactopyranosyl-(1{\rightarrow}4)-D-glucoamide]$ to the terminal end group of a PLGA to increase the cell adhesion and matain the differentiated function of hepatocytes. Cell-seeded scaffolds were secured in a flow bioreactor chamber and exposed to continuous flow at 5 ml/min. As a result of our study, the high yield of hepatocytes attachment was accomplished by increasing the concentration of PLGA-AGA conjugate in polymer scaffolds and cells in the scaffolds under continuos flow condition maintained a high level of viability and albumin secretion rate of cultured hepatocytes showed a higher level that of control groups.