Microencapsulation technology is a useful tool for cell cultivation and metabolite production of bacteria. In this paper, Alg-Sr2+ microcapsules were used to co-culture two kinds of cells to enhance cell viability. Alginate and strontium chloride are introduced to prepare microcapsules for their resistance to immune rejection and perfect biocompatibility. Four groups including HepG2, co-cultured 3T3/HepG2, microencapsulated HepG2 and co-microencapsulated 3T3/HepG2 were prepared to determine the cell viability, albumin secretion and urea synthesis. MTT assay showed the relative growth rate (RGR) of co-cultured 3T3/HepG2 was the highest, co-microencapsulated group was the second and microencapsulated HepG2 was the lowest. Additionally, significant difference was shown on albumin secretion among the four groups. Co-microencapsulated 3T3/HepG2 had the notable albumin secretion. On the contrary, HepG2 group increased slowly and even decreased after five days. Besides, co-cultured or co-microencapsulated cells synthesize more urea than other two groups. The results indicate that 3T3 cells and Alg-Sr2+ microencapsulated environment can promote the viability of hepatocytes, which also provides an alternative way for the future bacterium cultivation to increase the bacterium yield or metabolite production.
Alg-Sr2+ microcapsules, co-culture, HepG2, 3T3
© The Author(s) 2014. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.