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University of Massachusetts Amherst

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Extracellular matrix

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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Complementary, Semi-Automated Methods For Creating Multi-Dimensional, Peg-Based Biomaterials, Elizabeth A. Brooks, Lauren E. Jansen, Maria F. Gencoglu, Annali M. Yurkevicz, Shelly Peyton Jan 2018

Complementary, Semi-Automated Methods For Creating Multi-Dimensional, Peg-Based Biomaterials, Elizabeth A. Brooks, Lauren E. Jansen, Maria F. Gencoglu, Annali M. Yurkevicz, Shelly Peyton

Chemical Engineering Faculty Publication Series

Tunable biomaterials that mimic selected features of the extracellular matrix (ECM), such as its stiffness, protein composition, and dimensionality, are increasingly popular for studying how cells sense and respond to ECM cues. In the field, there exists a significant trade-off for how complex and how well these biomaterials represent the in vivo microenvironment, versus how easy they are to make and how adaptable they are to automated fabrication techniques. To address this need to integrate more complex biomaterials design with high-throughput screening approaches, we present several methods to fabricate synthetic biomaterials in 96-well plates and demonstrate that they can be …


Smooth Muscle Stiffness Sensitivity Is Driven By Soluble And Insoluble Ecm Chemistry, William G. Herrick, Shruti Rattan, Thuy V. Nguyen, Michael S. Grunwald, Christopher W. Barney, Alfred J. Crosby, Shelly Peyton Jan 2015

Smooth Muscle Stiffness Sensitivity Is Driven By Soluble And Insoluble Ecm Chemistry, William G. Herrick, Shruti Rattan, Thuy V. Nguyen, Michael S. Grunwald, Christopher W. Barney, Alfred J. Crosby, Shelly Peyton

Chemical Engineering Faculty Publication Series

Smooth muscle cell (SMC) invasion into plaques and subsequent proliferation is a major factor in the progression of atherosclerosis. During disease progression, SMCs experience major changes in their microenvironment, such as what integrin-binding sites are exposed, the portfolio of soluble factors available, and the elasticity and modulus of the surrounding vessel wall. We have developed a hydrogel biomaterial platform to examine the combined effect of these changes on SMC phenotype. We were particularly interested in how the chemical microenvironment affected the ability of SMCs to sense and respond to modulus. To our surprise, we observed that integrin binding and soluble …