Max Darnell

TL;DR: It is found that cell spreading, proliferation, and osteogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are all enhanced in cells cultured in gels with faster relaxation, highlighting stress relaxation as a key characteristic of cell-ECM interactions and as an important design parameter of biomaterials for cell culture.

TL;DR: Surprisingly, both the computational model and experiments find that spreading for cells cultured on soft substrates that exhibit stress relaxation is greater than cells spreading on elastic substrates of the same modulus, but similar to that of cells spread on stiffer elastic substrate.

TL;DR: In this paper, a void-forming hydrogel was used to control mesenchymal stem cell osteogenesis and cell deployment in vitro and in vivo, respectively, by modifying the hydrogels' elastic modulus or its chemistry.

TL;DR: Alginate/PAAM IPN hydrogels can sustain a compressive strain of over 90% with minimal loss of Young's Modulus as well as minimal swelling for up to 50 days of soaking in culture conditions, and although cells exposed to conditioned media demonstrate slight reductions in proliferation and metabolic activity, these effects are abrogated in a dose-dependent manner.

TL;DR: By developing injectable, void-forming hydrogels that decouple pore formation from elasticity, this work shows that mesenchymal stem cell osteogenesis in vitro, and cell deployment in vitro and in vivo, can be controlled by modifying the hydrogel's elastic modulus or its chemistry.