An osteosarcoma-on-a-chip model for studying osteosarcoma matrix-cell interactions and drug responses.

Marrow niches in osteosarcoma (OS) are a specialized microenvironment that is essential for the maintenance and regulation of OS cells. However, existing animal xenograft models are plagued by variability, complexity, and high cost. Herein, we used a decellularized osteosarcoma extracellular matrix (dOsEM) loaded with extracellular vesicles from human bone marrow-derived stem cells (hBMSC-EVs) and OS cells as a bioink to construct a micro-osteosarcoma (micro-OS) through 3D printing.

Current Immunotherapy Strategies for Rheumatoid Arthritis: The Immunoengineering and Delivery Systems.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease accompanied by persistent multiarticular synovitis and cartilage degradation. The present clinical treatments are limited to disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) and aims to relieve pain and control the inflammation of RA. Despite considerable advances in the research of RA, the employment of current clinical procedure is enormous, hindered by systemic side effect, frequent administration, tolerance from long-lasting administration, and high costs.

Detection of lineage-reprogramming efficiency of tumor cells in a 3D-printed liver-on-a-chip model.

The liver metastasis accompanied with the loss of liver function is one of the most common complications in patients with triple-negative breast cancers (TNBC). Lineage reprogramming, as a technique direct inducing the functional cell types from one lineage to another lineage without passing through an intermediate pluripotent stage, is promising in changing cell fates and overcoming the limitations of primary cells. However, most reprogramming techniques are derived from human fibroblasts, and whether cancer cells can be reversed into hepatocytes remains elusive.

Lentiviral Capsid-Mediated Cas9 Ribonucleoprotein Delivery for Efficient and Safe Multiplex Genome Editing.

Transient expression of the CRISPR-Cas9 machinery is desirable to reduce the risks of off-targets and immune responses. Electroporation of Cas9 ribonucleoproteins (RNPs) is the most common delivery method to achieve transient Cas9 expression. Recently, retroviral capsids have been used for delivering Cas9 RNPs, in which Cas9 was fused to the viral proteins.

Adenine Base Editor Ribonucleoproteins Delivered by Lentivirus-Like Particles Show High On-Target Base Editing and Undetectable RNA Off-Target Activities.

Adenine base editors (ABEs) can correct gene mutations without creating double-strand breaks. However, in recent reports, these editors showed guide-independent RNA off-target activities. This work describes our development of a delivery method to minimize ABEs' RNA off-target activity.

3D scaffold-free microlivers with drug metabolic function generated by lineage-reprogrammed hepatocytes from human fibroblasts.

Generating microliver tissues to recapitulate hepatic function is of increasing importance in tissue engineering and drug screening. But the limited availability of primary hepatocytes and the marked loss of phenotype hinders their application. Human induced hepatocytes (hiHeps) generated by direct reprogramming can address the shortage of primary hepatocytes to make personalized drug prediction possible.

An oxygen-releasing device to improve the survival of mesenchymal stem cells in tissue engineering.

Supplying oxygen to inner areas of cell constructs to support cell proliferation and metabolism is a major challenge in tissue engineering involving stem cells. Developing devices that incorporate oxygen release materials to increase the availability of the localized oxygen supply is therefore key to addressing this limitation. Herein, we designed and developed a 3D-printed oxygen-releasing device composed of an alginate hydrogel scaffold combined with an oxygen-generating biomaterial (calcium peroxide) to improve the oxygen supply of the microenvironment for culturing adipose tissue-derived stem cells.