1. Introduction
The stiffness of a tissue changes during the lifetime of an individual and is an indicator of age, disease, and pathophysiological conditions. Increased tissue stiffness is a hallmark of illnesses like cancer and cardiovascular diseases, causing major mortality worldwide. Cells interact with the mechanical cues of the surrounding ECM by adjusting themselves through communication from the nanometer to the meter scale by rearranging their cytoskeleton, nuclear envelope structure and composition, and migration. Understanding how forces work will unlock new avenues in disease research, regenerative medicine, and the design of implantable biomaterials.
2. Materials and Methods
A 3D silk fibroin biomaterial library is created with diverse mechanical stiffness ranging from ~3 kPa to 0.4 kPa.
3. Results
The cell–cell and cell–ECM interactions in this dynamic niche are evaluated using stem cells. The up- or down-regulation of certain genes with ECM stiffness acts as a marker of cellular response to dynamic mechanical ECM, while cell-mediated mineralization is indicative of cell–cell and cell–ECM crosstalk.
4. Conclusions
This study also confirms that biomimetic, dynamic ECM-mediated physical cues not only influence the differentiation behavior of the cells but also regulate the migration of surrounding cells toward the engineered niche. However, further investigation is needed.
Funding
This work is supported by SERB-DST (SRG/2022/000563/LS), the Government of India (B.K.).
Institutional Review Board Statement
Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement
Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement
Not applicable.
Acknowledgments
The author is thankful to the I3Bs, Research Institute on Biomaterials, Biodegradables, and Biomimetics, University of Minho, Portugal, for the infrastructure support.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Disclaimer/Publisher’s Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content. |
© 2024 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).