There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
We investigate the gelation of a poly(ethylene oxide)-poly(propylene oxide)-poly(ethylene
oxide) copolymer, Pluronic F127, in mammalian cell culture medium for applications
in tissue engineering and cell encapsulation. In both minimum essential medium (MEM)
and MEM with added fetal bovine serum (MEM-FBS), the gel-phase boundary shifts to
lower temperatures and concentrations as compared to pure water. The thermodynamics
of gel formation are similar in MEM, MEM-FBS, and pure water, suggesting that the
mechanism of gelation is similar in all three solvents. The shift of the sol-gel boundary
to lower concentrations is particularly significant for development of cell encapsulation
protocols using Pluronics and applications where copolymer concentration must be minimized
due to toxicity concerns.