ArticleBiomedical materials (Bristol, England)2025
Leveraging crosslinker diffusion to template stiffness gradients in alginate hydrogels.
Article in Biomedical materials (Bristol, England), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Anti-Swelling Hydrogel Wearable Sensors: Structural Engineering, Internal Water Environment Regulation, and Motion Monitoring in Complex Environments.Gels (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Focused ultrasound for cellular mechanoactivation and nanomedicine delivery in cancer.Biomedical microdevices · 2026Review
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Authors and funding
15 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Mechanobiology drives many important cell biological behaviors such as stem cell differentiation, cancer drug resistance and cell migration up stiffness gradients, a process called durotaxis. The development of 3D hydrogel systems with tunable 2D mechanical gradient patterns affords the ability to study these mechanosensitive cell behaviors to understand cancer invasion or enhance wound healing through directed migration. In this paper, we developed an approach to spatially imprint within alginate hydrogels, gradients in mechanical properties that can be used to probe mechanobiology. Stencils were easily designed and fabricated using a common craft cutter to control the presentation of a calcium crosslinking solution to alginate gels. Different stencil shapes result in different gradients in opacity that can be imprinted into both thick and thin alginate gels of arbitrary 2D shape. The steepness of the opacity gradient as well as the maximum opacity can be controlled based on reproducible crosslinking kinetics regulated through calcium concentration and gradient developing time. Calcium crosslinking results in both opacity changes as well as increases in elastic modulus in the bulk hydrogel. Opacity correlates with elastic modulus over a range of elastic moduli, allowing it to be used as a proxy for local elastic modulus. Functionalized alginate gels with collagen and imprinted stiffness gradients within them resulted in cell invasion that was spatially dependent, where stiffer regions facilitated deeper invasion of breast cancer cells. Consequently, this stenciling approach represents a facile way to control stiffness gradients in alginate gels in order to study mechanosensitive cellular behavior.
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