Journal
ORGANOGENESIS
Volume 9, Issue 2, Pages 70-75Publisher
TAYLOR & FRANCIS INC
DOI: 10.4161/org.24942
Keywords
matrix stiffness; endothelial cell; angiogenesis; glycation; biomaterials; three-dimensional
Funding
- National Institutes of Health [GM103388 HL097296]
- Cornell Center on the Microenvironment and Metastasis from the National Cancer Institute [U54CA143876]
- National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The mechanical properties of the extracellular matrix play an important role in maintaining cellular function and overall tissue homeostasis. Recently, a number of hydrogel systems have been developed to investigate the role of matrix mechanics in mediating cell behavior within three-dimensional environments. However, many of the techniques used to modify the stiffness of the matrix also alter properties that are important to cellular function including matrix density, porosity and binding site frequency, or rely on amorphous synthetic materials. In a recent publication, we described the fabrication, characterization and utilization of collagen gels that have been non-enzymatically glycated in their unpolymerized form to produce matrices of varying stiffness. Using these scaffolds, we showed that the mechanical properties of the resulting collagen gels could be increased 3-fold without significantly altering the collagen fiber architecture. Using these matrices, we found that endothelial cell spreading and outgrowth from multi-cellular spheroids changes as a function of the stiffness of the matrix. Our results demonstrate that non-enzymatic collagen glycation is a tractable technique that can be used to study the role of 3D stiffness in mediating cellular function. This commentary will review some of the current methods that are being used to modulate matrix mechanics and discuss how our recent work using non-enzymatic collagen glycation can contribute to this field.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available