Researchers from the Biomaterials for Tissue Engineering and Cancer Research Lab, led by Dr. Steve Florczyk, published an article “3D porous chitosan-alginate scaffold stiffness promotes differential responses in prostate cancer cell lines” in Biomaterials, the top biomaterials journal with a 2018 impact factor of 10.273. The article demonstrated that prostate cancer cell lines responded differently to chitosan-alginate (CA) scaffolds with increasing stiffness depending on the phenotypic characteristics of the cell lines. The researchers also found that two of the three prostate cancer cell lines mineralized in basal cell culture media during the 15 day cultures. This was an interesting finding as it is the first time that prostate cancer mineralization has been observed in vitro without additional chemical supplements added to the cell culture media.
Kailei Xu, a MSE Ph.D. student, was the lead researcher on the project. The project was conducted in collaboration with UCF Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences and Mayo Clinic Jacksonville. The research was supported by UCF start-up funding, UCF College of Medicine Internal Grant, and a Mayo Clinic-UCF Seed Grant.