Assessment of viability of wharton's jelly mesenchymal stem cells encapsulated in alginate scaffold by WST-8 assay kit

Cell encapsulation utilizing biodegradable material has promising outcomes for tissue engineering. From a long time ago, alginate has been generally utilized for drug delivery, cell transplantation and as a scaffold in biomedical applications. The aim of this study was the comparison of cell viability in the presence of two polymerizing ions: Ba²⁺ and Ca²⁺ to improvement the quality of alginate scaffold. For this purpose, WJMSCs after three passage were encapsulated in alginate scaffold in the presence of Ba²⁺ and ca²⁺. Cell viability was evaluated by WST-8 assay kit after 24, 48 and 72 hours. The results showed that encapsulated cells in the presence of Ca²⁺ had more viability than Ba²⁺. It was also found that using the WST-8 assay kit is a convenient and fast method for evaluation the viability of cells. It can be claimed that Calcl2 polymerizing solution provides more favorable conditions for cell viability compared to Bacl2 solution.

Running title: Assessing the viability of stem cells by WST-8 assay kit