A team of researchers in Finland has developed a new way to build living tissue models in the lab, using a plant-based antioxidant, vitamin B2, and ordinary blue light. The work could make it easier and safer to grow tissue for medical research, drug testing, and regenerative medicine.
The platform, developed at Tampere University, centers on a molecule called gallic acid, a naturally occurring compound found in plants, fruits, and tea leaves. When biopolymers modified with gallic acid are exposed to blue light in the presence of riboflavin, which is vitamin B2, they form hydrogels rapidly. Those hydrogels can then hold proteins, DNA, and RNA without requiring those molecules to be chemically altered beforehand. The findings were published in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science.
Hydrogels are water-rich materials used in labs to replicate the environment that surrounds cells inside the human body. Scientists use them to study how cells behave, test new drugs, and develop therapies. But existing methods for making hydrogels have significant drawbacks. They often require toxic chemicals, multiple preparation steps, or synthetic additives that can interfere with cell function and make it hard to customize the material.
According to Phys.org, the Tampere team wanted to get around those problems entirely. "Many current hydrogel systems rely on specialized chemistries, often involving toxic chemicals, multiple preparation steps or synthetic additives that can affect cells," said lead author and doctoral researcher Austin Donnelly Evans. "We wanted to develop a platform that is simple, flexible and as cell-friendly as possible, while enabling biomolecules to be incorporated in their active state."
One of the key tests the researchers ran involved a protein called Wnt3A, which plays a role in signaling between cells. After being embedded inside the hydrogel, Wnt3A remained biologically active and continued to affect cell behavior. That result matters because many existing hydrogel methods damage or deactivate proteins during the process of gel formation, making the resulting tissue models less accurate and less useful.
The hydrogels also supported high cell survival rates and allowed cells to grow in three-dimensional environments, which more closely resemble the way tissues are organized inside a living body. That three-dimensional quality is considered important for making lab models that reflect what actually happens in human biology.
The platform is also designed to be adaptable. Researchers can adjust the physical properties of the hydrogel and choose which biological molecules to include, depending on the type of tissue they want to model. Evans described it in terms of assembly. "Gallic acid allows us to create robust hydrogels while preserving the functionality of both the underlying biomaterial and the incorporated biological molecules," he said. "The resulting materials also behave more like natural tissues, which are dynamic, partially self-healing, viscoelastic and flexible."
Unlike many other light-activated hydrogel systems, the new platform uses riboflavin, a naturally occurring vitamin, rather than synthetic chemical initiators. Riboflavin is already considered safe for use in medical and biological applications, which makes the system more compatible with living cells and potentially easier to move toward clinical or research use.
The researchers described their long-term goal as something like building with modular parts, creating tissue-specific environments by selecting and combining biological components in a controlled way. The platform is intended to work across a range of applications, including disease modeling, drug discovery, and regenerative medicine.
The paper is available in Cell Reports Physical Science. No timeline for clinical application was given.
