Online monitoring of the mechanical behavior of collagen hydrogels : influence of corneal fibroblasts on elastic modulus
Ahearne, Mark, Liu, Kuo-Kang, El Haj, Alicia J., Then, Kong Y., Rauz, Saaeha and Yang, Y. (Ying). (2010) Online monitoring of the mechanical behavior of collagen hydrogels : influence of corneal fibroblasts on elastic modulus. Tissue Engineering Part C: Methods, Vol.16 (No.2). pp. 319-327. ISSN 1937-3384Full text not available from this repository.
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/ten.tec.2008.0650
Collagen hydrogels have been widely used to model biological systems and examine cell behavior in vitro. Of increasing interest is how cells affect the mechanical characteristics of their surrounding matrix and vice versa over long culture periods. In this study, the change in mechanical properties of collagen hydrogels embedded with human corneal fibroblasts was examined over a 6-week culture period using a novel online spherical indentation system. The elastic modulus of the hydrogels was found to increase during the first 2 weeks of culture and decrease after 4 weeks in culture. The effects of actin polymerization and matrix metalloproteinase inhibitors were also examined, which verified some mechanisms involved in the alteration of the mechanical properties such as cell tensile forces and other potential factors. This online monitoring technique demonstrates the ability to examine the mechanical properties of cell-seeded constructs in response to the culture environments—in particular, the response to the addition of drugs or chemical reagents—which will provide a useful tool in studying the mechano-feedback loop between cells and their surrounding matrix.
|Item Type:||Journal Article|
|Subjects:||R Medicine > RE Ophthalmology
T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
|Divisions:||Faculty of Science > Engineering|
|Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):||Colloids -- Mechanical properties, Fibroblasts, Cornea, Elasticity, Biomedical engineering|
|Journal or Publication Title:||Tissue Engineering Part C: Methods|
|Publisher:||Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Publishers|
|Official Date:||April 2010|
|Page Range:||pp. 319-327|
|Access rights to Published version:||Restricted or Subscription Access|
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