Journal
JOURNAL OF MATERIALS CHEMISTRY B
Volume 8, Issue 31, Pages 6814-6826Publisher
ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/d0tb00613k
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Funding
- National Science Foundation Division of Materials Research (NSF CAREER) [1941401]
- National Institutes of Health (NHLBI) [P01 HL14985]
- Department of Defense [PR 192068, PR 181125]
- Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation
- European Research Council (ERC) [805361]
- RESPIRE3 Postdoctoral Fellowship - European Respiratory Society
- European Union [713406]
- European Research Council (ERC) [805361] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
- Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien
- Division Of Materials Research [1941401] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Fibrotic disorders account for over one third of mortalities worldwide. Despite great efforts to study the cellular and molecular processes underlying fibrosis, there are currently few effective therapies. Dual-stage polymerization reactions are an innovative tool for recreating heterogeneous increases in extracellular matrix (ECM) modulus, a hallmark of fibrotic diseases in vivo. Here, we present a clickable decellularized ECM (dECM) crosslinker incorporated into a dynamically responsive poly(ethylene glycol)alpha-methacrylate (PEG alpha MA) hybrid-hydrogel to recreate ECM remodeling in vitro. An off-stoichiometry thiol-ene Michael addition between PEGaMA (8-arm, 10 kg mol(-1)) and the clickable dECM resulted in hydrogels with an elastic modulus of E = 3.6 +/- 0.24 kPa, approximating healthy lung tissue (1-5 kPa). Next, residual alpha MA groups were reacted via a photo-initiated homopolymerization to increase modulus values to fibrotic levels (E = 13.4 +/- 0.82 kPa) in situ. Hydrogels with increased elastic moduli, mimicking fibrotic ECM, induced a significant increase in the expression of myofibroblast transgenes. The proportion of primary fibroblasts from dual-reporter mouse lungs expressing collagen 1a1 and alpha-smooth muscle actin increased by approximately 60% when cultured on stiff and dynamically stiffened hybrid-hydrogels compared to soft. Likewise, fibroblasts expressed significantly increased levels of the collagen 1a1 transgene on stiff regions of spatially patterned hybrid-hydrogels compared to the soft areas. Collectively, these results indicate that hybrid-hydrogels are a new tool that can be implemented to spatiotemporally induce a phenotypic transition in primary murine fibroblasts in vitro.
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