Journal
NANO LETTERS
Volume 21, Issue 16, Pages 6740-6747Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c00371
Keywords
adaptive hydrogels; ferrogels; magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles; extracellular matrices; mammary epithelium
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Funding
- China Scholarship Council [201706260280]
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This paper presents a novel hybrid hydrogel composed of magnetite nanorods and a synthetic matrix that can enhance the mechanical properties of cell culture systems through magnetically-induced stiffening. The study demonstrates the potential of this hydrogel in 3D cell culture experiments by showing changes in cell morphology under the influence of a magnetic field. The results indicate that the hydrogel has unique on-demand adaptive mechanical properties suitable for cell culture applications.
The mechanical environment of a cell is not constant. This dynamic behavior is exceedingly difficult to capture in (synthetic) in vitro matrices. This paper describes a novel, highly adaptive hybrid hydrogel composed of magnetically sensitive magnetite nanorods and a stress-responsive synthetic matrix. Nanorod rearrangement after application of (small) magnetic fields induces strain in the network, which results in a strong (over 10-fold) stiffening even at minimal (2.5 wt %) nanorod concentrations. Moreover, the stiffening mechanism yields a fast and fully reversible response. In the manuscript, we quantitatively analyze that forces generated by the particles are comparable to cellular forces. We demonstrate the value of magnetic stiffening in a 3D MCF10A epithelial cell experiment, where simply culturing on top of a permanent magnet gives rise to changes in the cell morphology. This work shows that our hydrogels are uniquely suited as 3D cell culture systems with on-demand adaptive mechanical properties.
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