Metabolic tagging of adipose-derived stem cells for targeted modulation of regenerative potency within mineralized collagen scaffolds
- 1University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Abstract
Recent efforts to reconstruct critical-sized craniomaxillofacial defects using biomaterials have increasingly sought strategies to accelerate proangiogenic processes immediately after surgical implantation to improve host-graft integration. A class of mineralized collagen scaffolds has recently been identified to promote osteogenesis of bone marrow and adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells both in vivo and in vitro, motivating efforts to identify strategies to promote osteogenic-angiogenic coupling in order to support regenerative healing. Here, we report the first-time use of a glycoengineering approach to generate a population of engineered ASCs (eASCs) from human adipose-derived stem cells (hASCs). This effort inserts an azido sugar onto the cell membrane that can be selectively targeted using DBCO-tagged biomolecules to selectively boost eASCs activity. We report the effects of azido sugar labeling conditions (concentration and incubation time) on eASCs labeling efficiency. We show proliferation and pro-regenerative gene expression activity of eASCs in mineralized collagen scaffolds are largely similar to conventional hASCs. And we demonstrate that molecular cargo functionalized with dibenzocyclooctyne (DBCO) can be conjugated to azido groups on eASCs via click chemistry. Together, this work shows metabolically labeled eASCs have the potential to be used for selective delivery of activity-inducing bioactive cues to enhance regenerative potential.
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BibTeX
@misc{kim2026metabolic,
title = {{Metabolic tagging of adipose-derived stem cells for targeted modulation of regenerative potency within mineralized collagen scaffolds}},
author = {J. Kim and D. Baskaran and A. Nunes and G. Rios Adorno and H. Wang and B. Harley},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.25.754411},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.25.754411v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Metabolic tagging of adipose-derived stem cells for targeted modulation of regenerative potency within mineralized collagen scaffolds
AU - J. Kim
AU - D. Baskaran
AU - A. Nunes
AU - G. Rios Adorno
AU - H. Wang
AU - B. Harley
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/25
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.25.754411
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.25.754411v1
AB - Recent efforts to reconstruct critical-sized craniomaxillofacial defects using biomaterials have increasingly sought strategies to accelerate proangiogenic processes immediately after surgical implantation to improve host-graft integration. A class of mineralized collagen scaffolds has recently been identified to promote osteogenesis of bone marrow and adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells both in vivo and in vitro, motivating efforts to identify strategies to promote osteogenic-angiogenic coupling in order to support regenerative healing. Here, we report the first-time use of a glycoengineering approach to generate a population of engineered ASCs (eASCs) from human adipose-derived stem cells (hASCs). This effort inserts an azido sugar onto the cell membrane that can be selectively targeted using DBCO-tagged biomolecules to selectively boost eASCs activity. We report the effects of azido sugar labeling conditions (concentration and incubation time) on eASCs labeling efficiency. We show proliferation and pro-regenerative gene expression activity of eASCs in mineralized collagen scaffolds are largely similar to conventional hASCs. And we demonstrate that molecular cargo functionalized with dibenzocyclooctyne (DBCO) can be conjugated to azido groups on eASCs via click chemistry. Together, this work shows metabolically labeled eASCs have the potential to be used for selective delivery of activity-inducing bioactive cues to enhance regenerative potential.
ER -