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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 46: Posters - Biomaterials and Biopolymers
BP 46.2: Poster
Wednesday, March 9, 2016, 17:00–19:00, Poster C
Novel hybrid hydrogel substrates elicit differential responses from human mesenchymal stem cells — •Christina Jayachandran1 and Florian Rehfeldt2 — 1Drittes Physikalisches Institut, Georg- August -Universität, Göttingen, Germany — 2Drittes Physikalisches Institut, Georg- August -Universität, Göttingen, Germany
It has been shown in the recent past that the responses of cells depend upon their environment's physical and chemical properties. Cultured on conventional collagen coated polyacrylamide (PA) gels, cells only 'feel' the linear elastic behaviour, in contrast to native extracellular matrix's non-linear elasticity.
In this study, we prepared hybrid hydrogels by incorporating collagen fibrils into the linearly elastic (PA) hydrogel. We tuned these gels in their physical stiffness from the soft to the stiff regime and investigated the responses of adult human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSC). On soft hybrid gels, hMSCs behave significantly different than on collagen coated gels, as they show classical morphologies resembling a stiff environment. Fluorescence imaging of hybrid gels revealed that stem cells locally re-organize the underlying collagen fibrils. These findings imply that stem cells behaviour is dependent on the non-linear elasticity of collagen and can show 3D network like behaviour even on a 2D hydrogel.