Journal
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 2, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1465
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Funding
- National Research Foundation of Korea
- Korean government (MEST) [2011-0018311, 2011-0018198]
- Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development
- Ministry of Education, Science and Technology [2011K00135]
- Ministry of Knowledge Economy [10033467-2010-12]
- Seoul Science Fellowship
- Div Of Electrical, Commun & Cyber Sys
- Directorate For Engineering [0901414] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology (KEIT) [10033477, 10033467] Funding Source: Korea Institute of Science & Technology Information (KISTI), National Science & Technology Information Service (NTIS)
- National Research Foundation of Korea [2011-0018311, 13-2008-00-015-00, 2011-0018198] Funding Source: Korea Institute of Science & Technology Information (KISTI), National Science & Technology Information Service (NTIS)
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Aqueous nanofibres constructed by the self-assembly of small amphiphilic molecules can become entangled to form hydrogels that have a variety of applications including tissue engineering, and controlled drug delivery. The hydrogels are formed through the random physical cross-linkings of flexible nanofibres. Here we report that self-assembled nanofibres with a nematic substructure are aligned into a nematic liquid crystal and are spontaneously fixed in the aligned state to give rise to anisotropic gels. The liquid-crystal gels respond to temperature by transforming into a fluid solution upon cooling. Thus, the nanofibre solution can be mixed with cells at room temperature and then can be transformed into gels to encapsulate the cells in a three-dimensional environment upon being heated to physiological temperatures. We found that the cells grow within the three-dimensional networks without compromising the cell viability, and that subsequent cooling triggers the encapsulated cells to be released through a sol-gel transition.
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