Liposomal oxygen-generating hydrogel for enhancing cell survival under hypoxia condition

Moghassemi, Saeid [UCL] Dadashzadeh, Arezoo [UCL] Jafari, Hafez Ghaffari-Bohlouli, Pejman Shavandi, Amin Andrade Amorim, Christiani [UCL]

The inadequate oxygen supply to engineered tissues has been a persistent challenge in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. To overcome this limitation, we developed a scaffold combined with an oxygen-releasing liposomal system comprising catalase-loaded liposomes (CAT@Lip) and H2O2-loaded liposomes (H2O2@Lip). This oxygenation system has shown high cytocompatibility when they were applied to human stromal cells. Under hypoxic conditions, the cell viability enclosed in the oxygen-releasing liposomal alginate hydrogel (94.62 ± 3.46%) was significantly higher than that of cells enclosed in hydrogel without liposomes (47.18 ± 9.68%). There was no significant difference in cell viability and apoptosis rate compared to normoxia conditions after three days, indicating the effectiveness of the oxygen-releasing approach in hypoxic conditions. In conclusion, our study demonstrates that the use of liposomal oxygen-releasing scaffolds can overcome the oxygen diffusion challenge in tissue implant fabrication, providing a simple solution for cellular oxygenation that could be a crucial element in tissue engineering.