2.1. Materials
Sodium alginate and Calcium chloride dried were purchased from Chem-Supply. Alpha-MEM (Gibco, Life Technologies, Australia, Cat. No. 12561056) was supplemented with fetal bovine serum (FBS, USA origin, Life Technologies, Australia), penicillin /streptomycin (Gibco), L-ascorbic acid-2-phosphate (Sigma-Aldrich), and 2mM L-Glutamine (Life Technologies, Australia). Natural mouse Laminin (Gibco-Life Technologies) and 0.01% Poly-l-lysine (PLL) solution (Sigma) were used as coating reagents. Trypsin-EDTA was supplied by Gibco Life Technologies, Australia. Clear-bottom 24-well and 96-well plates (Costar®, Corning, NY, USA) were used throughout the study. The cytotoxicity assay was performed following the manufacturer’s protocol using LDH kit from Promega Corporation (WI, USA). The AlamarBlueTM cell viability reagent was supplied by Invitrogen–ThermoFisher Scientific, USA.