Description
- Abstract:
- Abstract of Investigating the Effect of Calcium Alginate Hydrogels on Chordoma, by Temitope Aina, ScM., Brown University, May 2025. Chordoma is a rare type of spinal cancer characterized by malignancy and a high recurrence rate. Current methods for treating chordoma include total tumor resection and radiation therapy, followed by opioid use for pain management. Opioid analgesics are common in the management of pain and are used to describe a wide range of medical products that can produce an inhibiting effect on pain signals. However, many complications are associated with chronic use of opioids. This can include tolerance, addictiveness, dependence, and hyperalgesia. In recent years, there has been an increase in the application of biomaterials for drug delivery use. Our goal is to develop a biodegradable calcium alginate hydrogel that can be surgically placed in an area of interest and determine its effectiveness on chordoma and for opioid release. Our study focused on assessing the releasing and non releasing hydrogels’ toxicity on chordoma cell lines and in immunocompromised mice, as well as determining the most functional calcium alginate concentration. Calcium alginate hydrogels were formed by cross-linking sodium alginate with calcium chloride. The two chordoma-derived cell lines were the U-CH1-N cell line and the primary JHC7 cell line. Hydrogels at different chosen calcium alginate concentrations (1.50%, 1.75%, 2.00%) at a volume of ~0.05 mL were placed into six-well and 96-well plates with U-CH1-N and JHC7 seeded at ~50,000 cells/well. Hydrogels of different volumes (~0.05 mL, ~0.10 mL) were implanted in mice near the right and left flank for 15 days and 30 day periods. The hydrogels pose no apparent toxicity to the used chordoma cell lines and can break down within tissue depending on concentration, volume, and incubation. The optimal concentration of the calcium alginate hydrogels was 2.00%. In the future, further experimentation on opioid release will be conducted with potentially more hydrophilic substances. Hydrogels will further encapsulate other compounds with medicinal properties for propagating chordoma tumor shrinkage and other tissue engineering applications.
- Notes:
- Thesis (Sc. M.)--Brown University, 2025
Citation
Aina, Temitope,
"Investigating the Effect of Calcium Alginate Hydrogels on Chordoma"
(2025).
Biomedical Engineering Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:e424hjcw/
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Collection:
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Biomedical Engineering Theses and Dissertations
Theses and Dissertations for the Biomedical Engineering department....