title: PEG-phosphorylcholine hydrogels as tunable and versatile platforms for mechanobiology.
abstract: We report here the synthesis of a new class of hydrogels with an extremely wide range of mechanical properties suitable for cell studies. Mechanobiology has emerged as an important field in bioengineering, in part due to the development of synthetic polymer gels and fibrous protein biomaterials to control and quantify how cells sense and respond to mechanical forces in their microenvironment. To address the problem of limited availability of biomaterials, in terms of both mechanical range and optical clarity, we have prepared hydrogels that combine poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) and phosphorylcholine (PC) zwitterions. Our goal was to create a hydrogel platform that exceeds the range of Young's moduli reported for similar hydrogels, while being simple to synthesize and manipulate. The Young's modulus of these "PEG-PC" hydrogels can be tuned over 4 orders of magnitude, much greater than commonly used hydrogels such as PEG-diacrylate, PEG-dimethacrylate, and polyacrylamide, with smaller average mesh sizes and optical clarity. We prepared PEG-PC hydrogels to study how substrate mechanical properties influence cell morphology, focal adhesion structure, and proliferation across multiple mammalian cell lines, as a proof of concept. These novel PEG-PC biomaterials represent a new and useful class of mechanically tunable hydrogels for mechanobiology.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003, United States.
authors.forename: William G
authors.initials: WG
authors.lastname: Herrick
authors.forename: Thuy V
authors.initials: TV
authors.lastname: Nguyen
authors.forename: Marianne
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sleiman
authors.forename: Samantha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: McRae
authors.forename: Todd S
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Emrick
authors.forename: Shelly R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Peyton
mesh_terms: D001672:Biocompatible Materials; D001703:Biophysics; D002448:Cell Adhesion; D045744:Cell Line, Tumor; D049109:Cell Proliferation; D055119:Elastic Modulus; D022001:Focal Adhesions; D006801:Humans; D020100:Hydrogels / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000737:chemistry*; D008113:Liver Neoplasms; D009131:Muscle, Smooth, Vascular / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism*; D010767:Phosphorylcholine / Q000737:chemistry*; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols / Q000737:chemistry*; D023822:Tissue Engineering
chemical_list: D001672:Biocompatible Materials; D020100:Hydrogels; D010767:Phosphorylcholine; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols