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Lipid Coated Microbubbles And Low Intensity Pulsed Ultrasound Enhance Chondrogenesis Of Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells In 3d Printed Scaffolds, Mitra Aliabouzar, Lijie Grace Zhang, Kausik Sarkar

Medicine Faculty Publications

Lipid-coated microbubbles are used to enhance ultrasound imaging and drug delivery. Here we apply these microbubbles along with low intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) for the first time to enhance proliferation and chondrogenic differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) in a 3D printed poly-(ethylene glycol)-diacrylate (PEG-DA) hydrogel scaffold. The hMSC proliferation increased up to 40% after 5 days of culture in the presence of 0.5% (v/v) microbubbles and LIPUS in contrast to 18% with LIPUS alone. We systematically varied the acoustic excitation parameters—excitation intensity, frequency and duty cycle—to find 30 mW/cm2, 1.5 MHz and 20% duty cycle to be optimal …