A microfabricated platform with on-chip strain sensing and hydrogel arrays for 3D mechanical stimulation of cells

摘要

Current high-throughput biomaterial screening approaches fail to consider the effects of dynamic mechanical stimulation, despite its importance in regenerative medicine applications. This paper reports a deformable membrane array that enables both 3D dynamic stretch and real-time stiffness sensing of cell-hydrogel constructs. The device membranes were fabricated with off-stoichiometry thiol-ene based polydimethylsiloxane (OSTE-PDMS) that is effective to covalently bond cell-seeded polyethylene glycol norbornene (PEG-NB) 3D hydrogels. We show that human mesenchymal stromal cells embedded in hydrogels and subjected to dynamic mechanical stimulation undergo myofibroblast differentiation and synthesize collagen, leading to gel stiffening. This system can be scaled up to larger arrays to enable systematic screening of 3D microenvironmental cues on cell function and tissue formation in vitro.