(541a) Dynamic Viscoelastic Hydrogels As Cell Culture Models of Fibrotic Disease

Hydrogels have proven useful in a range of human health applications because of their ability to mimic salient tissue properties including high water content, controlled ligand presentation, and soft tissue mechanics. Recent advances in hydrogel design are increasingly moving away from static, monolithic platforms and toward dynamic, interactive, and responsive materials that capture the complexity of native cellular microenvironments in wound healing and tissue regeneration. This talk will discuss our progress on designing hydrogels based on the natural polymer hyaluronic acid as disease models that recapitulate the dynamic mechanical properties of fibrosis. Specifically, I will present our latest results on fabricating and characterizing modular mutliwell viscoelastic hydrogels to study biological phenomena including stromal-immune cell crosstalk and senescent cell mechanobiology.