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Alginate@TiO2 hybrid microcapsules as a reservoir of beta INS-1E cells with controlled insulin delivery

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Abstract

Designing biocompatible materials to encapsulate xenogeneic insulin-releasing β-cells for transplantation has been considered as a promising alternative to avoid the immunosuppression and drawbacks of the treatment of Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1D) by direct islet transplantation. The current work for the first time studied a hybrid alginate@TiO2 microcapsule as a reservoir for rat insulinoma-derived INS-1E cells, as a β-cell surrogate, towards the treatment of T1D. The hybrid microcapsule is composed of an alginate core as a biocompatible matrix for cell encapsulation and a crack-free TiO2 shell as a semipermeable membrane to prevent cell leakage, protect encapsulated cells from immune attacks, as well as allow the diffusion of nutrients and the secretion of insulin. Compared to most-commonly used pure alginate microcapsules, the insulin-secreting INS-1E cells encapsulated in our alginate@TiO2 microcapsules revealed higher metabolic activity and maintained the insulin secretion over more than 6 weeks. This study highlights that our designed alginate@TiO2 hybrid microcapsules can serve as an ideal reservoir for cell encapsulation towards the treatment of T1D, thus further promoting the development of artificial organs for cell therapy.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (IRT_15R52) and “Algae Factory” (1610187) European H2020 program financed by FEDER and Wallonia Region of Belgium. G. Leroux thanks University of Namur for his assistant position to realize his PhD research. We thank Prof. Pierre Maechler of the University of Geneva and Prof. Patrick Gilon of Université Catholique de Louvain for their supply of the rat insulin-secreting cell line INS-1E.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Inorganic Materials Chemistry (CMI), University of Namur, 61 Rue de Bruxelles, 5000, Namur, Belgium

    Grégory Leroux, Myriam Neumann, Christophe F. Meunier, Li Wang & Bao-Lian Su

  2. Laboratory of Biochemistry and Cell Biology (URBC), Namur Research Institute for Life Sciences (NARILIS), University of Namur, 61 Rue de Bruxelles, 5000, Namur, Belgium

    Carine Michiels

  3. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Luoshi Road 122, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Bao-Lian Su

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  1. Grégory Leroux
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Correspondence to Li Wang or Bao-Lian Su.

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Leroux, G., Neumann, M., Meunier, C.F. et al. Alginate@TiO2 hybrid microcapsules as a reservoir of beta INS-1E cells with controlled insulin delivery. J Mater Sci 55, 7857–7869 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-020-04576-9

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