11/20/2023 0 Comments Tissue engineering scaffold stiffness![]() While hydrogels with a stiffness gradient can better mimic native tissue, he says, they can also yield better control over certain aspects of the stem cell, such as its shape, its rate of migration, and its lineage specification, which determines what type of cell it will become. "We wanted to see what the impact of these changes in stiffness had on the migration and motility of cells encapsulated in the network.” “In our lab, we hadn’t investigated materials with nonuniform stiffness," he says. That method is described in a paper recently published in Macromolecules, with McGlynn as lead author. McGlynn-together with his advisor and co-author Kelly Schultz ( pictured), an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering-developed a method that will help researchers better quantify the stiffness of nonuniform hydrogels and, therefore, better match the properties of human tissue. “If you want to repair something like the ACL, which tends to have a really steep change in stiffness as you move from the center of the tendon out toward the bone, you need a material that also exhibits that strong change in stiffness,” says John McGlynn ’22 PhD ( pictured), who recently graduated and is now at Merck. Designing an effective material for this emerging technique, however, requires closely matching the properties of the implant to that of the native tissue. When a hydrogel scaffold is encapsulated with stem cells and injected into an injury site, the cells can migrate to the damaged area and accelerate healing. Hydrogels-networks of highly absorbent polymer chains-play a key role in the development of cutting-edge implantable devices for wound healing.
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