Cellular Snowballing: Cell Adhesion and Migration Drive the Self‐Assembly of Cell‐Microgel Biohybrid Spheroids (Adv. Sci. 30/2026)

Tissue Engineering In their Research Article (DOI: 10.1002/advs.202511302), Amir Sheikhi and co-workers report a new class of biohybrid spheroids (BHS) formed through the self-assembly of adherent cells with extracellular matrix-mimetic hydrogel microparticles (microgels). Inspired by a snowballing growth mechanism, this strategy enables scalable fabrication of porous, millimeter-scale spheroids with improved molecular diffusion, cell viability, and function. By tuning microgel size, spheroid architecture and dimensions can be precisely controlled. An agent-based model further elucidates assembly kinetics and BHS properties, providing a predictive framework for bottom-up engineering of physiologically relevant 3D tissue models.