Researchers studied the surface morphology of human tissue ECM hydrogels along with their cell viability and their metabolic activity in 2D and 3D culture systems. SEM images showed that the hydrogels fabricated from various human tissues had differences in surface microstructure. The highly dense collagen fibers observed with SEM for birth and skin ECM might allow for enhanced cell-matrix interactions and signaling, thereby promoting higher metabolic activity. Cell attachment results exhibited excellent cell viability on day 1 for all the tissue-specific coated plates in 2D culture and displayed well-spread morphology on day 7, maintaining their viability
overtime. A similar phenomena was shown for the 3D cell culture system wherein the cell metabolic activity was comparable in all hydrogels on day 1 and increased significantly overtime. Overall, these findings indicate that multicomponent ECM matrix can better support cell response, as cells cultured in 2D and 3D pure collagen systems was lower than tissue-specific ECM.

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