**4. Conclusions**

In conclusion, alginate/MSC constructs have been used for a wide variety of regenerative medicine applications, ranging from musculoskeletal to cardiac tissue repair. MSCs isolated from adult and fetal tissues have been combined with alginate hydrogels functionalized with extracellular matrix components, minerals, and other natural polymers and evaluated in vitro and in vivo. In vitro studies demonstrated the ability of alginate hydrogel at different formulations to support MSC growth and differentiation toward several lineages, whereas in vivo data have shown that when alginate-based materials are combined with MSCs, they can achieve successful healing of bone and cartilage defects, myocardial tissue after myocardial infarction, tendon tears, and skin wound. Nonetheless, evaluation of safety and efficacy of the constructs is required prior to clinical use. Existing in vitro and in vivo data demonstrate the potential of alginates to play an important future role in regenerative medicine, reaching the bedside and achieving regeneration of damaged tissues.

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USA

GA, USA

**Author details**

Michail E. Klontzas1,2, Hicham Drissi3

provided the original work is properly cited.

*The Use of Alginate Hydrogels for the Culture of Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs): In Vitro and…*

and Athanasios Mantalaris2

1 Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Biomedical Systems Engineering Laboratory, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

2 School of Medicine, Winship Cancer Institute, Emory University, Atlanta, GA,

3 Department of Orthopaedics, School of Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta,

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

\*Address all correspondence to: sakis.mantalaris@gatech.edu

\*

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.88020*

## **Conflict of interest**

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

*The Use of Alginate Hydrogels for the Culture of Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs): In Vitro and… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.88020*
