The Optimization of a Novel Hydrogel—Egg White-Alginate for 2.5D Tissue Engineering of Salivary Spheroid-Like Structure

Hydrogels have been used for a variety of biomedical applications; in tissue engineering, they are commonly used as scaffolds to cultivate cells in a three-dimensional (3D) environment allowing the formation of organoids or cellular spheroids. Egg white-alginate (EWA) is a novel hydrogel which combines the advantages of both egg white and alginate; the egg white material provides extracellular matrix (ECM)-like proteins that can mimic the ECM microenvironment, while alginate can be tuned mechanically through its ionic crosslinking property to modify the scaffold’s porosity, strength, and stiffness. In this study, a frozen calcium chloride (CaCl₂) disk technique to homogenously crosslink alginate and egg white hydrogel is presented for 2.5D culture of human salivary cells. Different EWA formulations were prepared and biologically evaluated as a spheroid-like structure platform. Although all five EWA hydrogels showed biocompatibility, the EWA with 1.5% alginate presented the highest cell viability, while EWA with 3% alginate promoted the formation of larger size salivary spheroid-like structures. Our EWA hydrogel has the potential to be an alternative 3D culture scaffold that can be used for studies on drug-screening, cell migration, or as an in vitro disease model. In addition, EWA can be used as a potential source for cell transplantation (i.e., using this platform as an ex vivo environment for cell expansion). The low cost of producing EWA is an added advantage.