Alginate

Derek Kallarackal, Eric Peterson and Michael Ren

BME 153

December 12, 2014

Investigating the Impact of Calcium Ions Released from Alginate Gels on the Inflammatory Response of Tendon Cells

A. Abstract

Tendon injuries are painful, debilitating and occur with great frequency. In the United States, of the 33 million musculoskeletal injuries reported, about 50% are tendon and ligament related (Calve 2004). Unfortunately, tendon repair is a slow process that is complicated by the need to provide appropriate and timely tension to the repair tissue and the natural tendon healing process as well as any current therapeutic intervention leaves tendons with an ultimately weaker functionality than they had pre-injury. To better understand and regulate the tendon healing and inflammation process to potentially improve tendon healing, we want to produce an in vitro three-dimensional (3D) tendon healing model that consists of tenocytes (tendon cells) in an alginate gel-based inflammatory environment. Alginate hydrogels are a suitable biomaterial because they are biologically inert and they can also be functionalized with various peptides to suit the needs of our tendon healing model. However, alginate hydrogels must be cross-linked with calcium (Ca2+) ions, and little research has been done to identify the potential effects of calcium ions released from alginate gels on the inflammatory response of tenocytes. Calcium is known to play an important role in cell function as a second messenger and has been shown to influence the inflammatory response of dendritic cells by increasing IL-1β, therefore we hypothesize that it can have an impact on the inflammatory response of tendon cells (Chan and Mooney 2013). As a result, in order to identify potential variables in our in vitro tendon healing model, we have developed three main aims. First, we aim to identify the concentration of calcium ions that are released from alginate gels into medium. Second, we aim to determine how...