INFLUENCE OF THE STERILIZATION METHOD ON THE PROLIFERATION AND VIABILITY OF MOLT-4 CELLS ENCAPSULATED IN ALGINATE GEL

Introduction. Alginate gel encapsulation is widely used in biomedical research to protect cells from mechanical stress and contact with the recipient’s immune system. The use of alginate for transplanting biomedical cellular products to humans imposes high requirements on the sterility of the final product. To select the optimal protocol for cell encapsulation for further in vitro use or transplantation of cells enclosed in an alginate gel, it is necessary to study how sterilization processes affect such characteristics of the obtained gel as the ability to maintain cell viability and proliferation.

The purpose of the study was to compare the effect of ultraviolet radiation and autoclaving on the biological properties of alginate gel.

Materials and methods. MOLT-4 culture cells were encapsulated in 1, 2 and 4 % alginate beads at a concentration of 0.75 × 10⁶ cells/ml. On the eighth day of cultivation, we measured the size of the colonies and determined the viability of the cells in an automatic cell counter.

Results. The colony area for all variants of the concentration of alginate gel was significantly higher for a gel sterilized by UV treatment compared with autoclaving. The difference between the colony sizes for the two methods of alginate sterilization was significant at the accepted level of significance for all variants of gel concentrations (α = 0.05, df = 198, t = 1.972). Moreover, the number of viable cells after dissolution of alginate did not significantly differ between the experimental variants.

Conclusion. Thus, autoclaving sterilization leads to proliferation retardation of encapsulated cells and cannot be recommended for use in protocols for the preparation of alginate capsules with encapsulated cells for in vitro and in vivo cultivation.