Figure 3.

In vivo assessment of the impact of hydrogel cross-linking on grafted cell viability. 30,000 MSCs were delivered bilaterally to the striatum in either transplantation media or a collagen hydrogel of various 4s-StarPEG concentrations and graft volume was assessed at days 1, 4 and 7 post-transplantation (A). MSCs were extracted from the bone-marrow of GFP transgenic rats, meaning grafts could be easily identified using fluorescent microscopy. The encapsulation of MSCs in hydrogels of increasing levels of 4s-StarPEG had no negative effect on graft volume in each group, at each time-point (B,C). Collagen IHC confirmed the in situ polymerisation of hydrogels and their presence at 7 days post-transplantation (D). Scale bar represents 100 µm. Data are represented as mean ± SEM and were analysed by two-way ANOVA with post-hoc Bonferroni.