Microfabrication Of Hydrogel Substrates Of Tunable Young'S Modulus

Abstract

Much is known about the effects of matrix stiffness and matrix topography on cell behavior, however they are seldom investigated in tandem. Presented and validated here is a micromolding method to introduce topographical features onto polyacrylamide (PA) substrates of tunable Young's modulus (E ). Feature fidelity is largely influenced by hydrogel swelling and most efficient on gels with a crosslinker concentration above 4.5%. However, this swelling does not affect the spacing of surface patterned ligands on two-dimensional PA gels. Bovine aortic endothelial cells (BAECs) cultured on linear micromolded features exhibit greater degrees of contact guidance with greater substrate E . Also described are applications of micromolding for future studies in cell mechanics.