Congratulations to Aart van Apeldoorn's group on making the front cover of Advanced Biosystems with their paper “Fucoidan Hydrogels Significantly Alleviate Oxidative Stress and Enhance the Endocrine Function of Encapsulated Beta Cells”.
In their paper, the group explores the potential of fucoidan, a marine sulfated polysaccharide, for pancreatic islet encapsulation. Fucoidan has high fucose contents with sulfate groups, demonstrating potent antioxidant properties and significantly alleviating oxidative stress and enhancing the viability and function of encapsulated beta cells. They therefore assessed the potential of a fucoidan-based hydrogel as biomaterial for bioengineered immunoprotective beta cell replacement systems.