Claims
- 1. A method for producing agar microbead encapsulated cells comprising the steps of:a. suspending cells in a molten polysaccharide mixture of agarose and agaropectin to form a cell-agar mixture; b. emulsifying said cell-agar mixture in oil to form an emulsion of small liquid droplets suspended in oil; c. cooling said emulsion in oil to cause the droplets to gel and form gel microbeads made of the mixture of agarose and agaropectin; and d. collecting and washing the gel microbeads to produce the agar microbead encapsulated cells.
- 2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the cells are selected from the group consisting of pancreatic islet cells, hepatocytes, dopamine-secreting cells and hybridoma cells.
- 3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the cells are pancreatic islet cells.
- 4. The method according to claim 1, wherein the oil phase is selected from the group consisting of silicone fluid, vegetable oil and mineral oil.
- 5. A method for producing agar microbead encapsulated pancreatic islet cells comprising the steps of:a. suspending pancreatic islet cells in a molten mixture of agarose and agaropectin at a temperature of about 41 to about 43 degrees Celsius to form a cell-agar mixture; b. emulsifying said cell-agar mixture for about 10-30 minutes in an oil phase to form an emulsion of small liquid droplets suspended in the oil; c. cooling said emulsion in oil to cause the droplets to gel and form gel microbeads; and d. collecting and washing the gel microbeads to produce the agar microbead encapsulated cells.
- 6. The method according to claim 5, wherein saline or culture medium is added during the collecting and washing step.
- 7. The method according to claim 6, wherein the culture medium is selected from the group consisting of Minimal Essential Medium, Dulbecco's Modified Eagle Medium, Medium 199, Roswell Park Memorial Institute medium and Krebs/Ringers solution.
Parent Case Info
This application is a divisional of Ser. No. 08/957,146 filed Oct. 24, 1997 now U.S. Pat. No. 6,023,009 which is a continuation of Ser. No. 08/606,422 filed Feb. 23, 1996 now abandoned.
US Referenced Citations (6)
Non-Patent Literature Citations (2)
Entry |
Sun, A.M., Microencapsulation of pancreatic islet cells: A bioartificial endocrine pancreas (1988) Methods of Enzymology, vol. 137, pp. 575-580.* |
Iwata et al., Agarose for a bioartificial pancreas (1992) Journal of Biomedical Materials Research, vol. 26, pp. 967-977. |
Continuations (1)
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Number |
Date |
Country |
Parent |
08/606422 |
Feb 1996 |
US |
Child |
08/957146 |
|
US |