Biocompatibility of alginates for grafting: impact of alginate molecular weight.

Optimising microencapsulation technology towards the effective clinical transplantation has created the need for highly biocompatible alginates. Therefore, in this study the biocompatibility of different beads prepared from alginates with varying average molecular weight was examined. In some experiments the beads were covered with a multilayer membrane surrounded by an alginate layer. First of all, we found that beads made of a lower weight average alginate elicted a much stronger fibrotic response compared to beads made of a higher weight average alginate (LV-alginate > MV-alginate). The results were confirmed by the observation that the extent of tissue fibrosis was significantly increas…