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Bio-inspired adhesive hydrogels have been applied to cell and drug delivery systems to address various tissue defects and disorders. However, adhesive hydrogels functionalized with phenolic moieties often lack osteoconductive capacity and mechanical properties for bone regeneration. In this study, we utilized the versatile chemical interactions of phenolic moieties to overcome such limitations in bone tissue engineering efforts. Highly osteoconductive hybrid hydrogel patches were fabricated by incorporating inorganic minerals, hydroxyapatite (HAP), or whitlockite (WKT), into pyrogallol-conjugated hyaluronic acid (HA-PG). The hybrid HA-PG patches exhibited improved mechanical strength and reinforced structural/physical properties owing to additional intermolecular complexation between oxidized PG moieties and ions released from inorganic particles. The sustained release of bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) from hybrid patches was prolonged by combination of the inherent nucleophilic affinity of oxidized PG and electrostatic interactions between inorganic particles and BMP-2. With increased osteoconductivity, hybrid patches with HAP or WKT enhanced the osteogenic differentiation of human stem cells while also promoting new bone formation in a critical-sized calvarial defect. Our study demonstrates a translational potential of phenolic adhesive hydrogels engineered with inorganic minerals for orthopedic applications.

The fabrication of functional tissues is essential for clinical applications such as disease treatment and drug discovery. Recent studies have revealed that the mechanical environments of tissues, determined by geometric cell patterns, material composition, or mechanical properties, play critical roles in ensuring proper tissue function. Here, we propose an acoustophoretic technique using surface acoustic waves to fabricate therapeutic vascular tissue containing a three-dimensional collateral distribution of vessels. Co-aligned human umbilical vein endothelial cells and human adipose stem cells that are arranged in a biodegradable catechol-conjugated hyaluronic acid hydrogel exhibit enhanced cell-cell contacts, gene expression, and secretion of angiogenic and anti-inflammatory paracrine factors. The therapeutic effects of the fabricated vessel constructs are demonstrated in experiments using an ischemia mouse model by exhibiting the remarkable recovery of damaged tissue. Our study can be referenced to fabricate various types of artificial tissues that mimic the original functions as well as structures., Engineering 3D tissues faces the challenge of adequate vascularisation for nutrient delivery and gas exchange deep inside the construct. Here the authors use surface acoustic waves to create an aligned array of blood vessels in a hyaluronic acid hydrogel and use it to improve function in a mouse hindlimb ischemia model.

Chondroitin sulfate (CS), the main component of cartilage extracellular matrix, has attracted attention as a biomaterial for cartilage tissue engineering. However, current CS hydrogel systems still have limitations for application in successful cartilage tissue engineering owing to their unsuitable degradation kinetics, insufficient mechanical similarity, and lack of integration with the native cartilage tissue. In this study, using mussel adhesive-inspired catechol chemistry, we developed a functional CS hydrogel that exhibits tunable physical and mechanical properties as well as excellent tissue adhesion for efficient integration with native tissues. Various properties of the developed catechol-functionalized CS (CS-CA) hydrogel, including swelling, degradation, mechanical properties, and adhesiveness, could be tailored by varying the conjugation ratio of the catechol group to the CS backbone and the concentration of the CS-CA conjugates. CS-CA hydrogels exhibited significantly increased modulus (∼10 kPa) and superior adhesive properties (∼3 N) over conventional CS hydrogels (∼hundreds Pa and ∼0.05 N). In addition, CS-CA hydrogels incorporating decellularized cartilage tissue dice promoted the chondrogenic differentiation of human adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells by providing a cartilage-like microenvironment. Finally, the transplantation of autologous cartilage dice using tissue-adhesive CS-CA hydrogels enhanced cartilage integration with host tissue and neo-cartilage formation owing to favorable physical, mechanical, and biological properties for cartilage formation. In conclusion, our study demonstrated the potential utility of the CS-CA hydrogel system in cartilage tissue reconstruction.

Soft actuators enable the motion of soft materials such as living organisms, biomaterials, and flexible materials in environments where multiple stimuli are simultaneously present. Although various fast, reversible, and direction-guided actuators exist, their material and structural complexity hinder the construction of a simple fabrication platform for actuators responsive to various environmental conditions with reversible and controlled actuation dynamics. We propose an engineered multi-responsive actuator fabrication platform by combining electrospinning and hydrogel lithography techniques. The fabricated soft actuator is composed of stimuli-responsive hydrogel fibers as an active layer, non-responsive fibers as a passive layer, and a micropatterned hydrogel coupling layer to combine those layers. We demonstrate the reversible bending and unbending of the actuator in response to changes in pH and temperature for less than 2 min. The computational modeling is used to elucidate the bending mechanism of the layered actuator and obtain the key parameters to determine its characteristics. The bending direction is regulated by modulating the mechanical properties of the actuator materials and dimensions of hydrogel micropatterns. The fabrication process is versatile and multi-responsive actuation is achieved by adding another active fiber layer without modifying it. Our study provides an insight into the design of a stimulus-specific, multi-scale, multi-functional soft actuator.

Actin, the most abundant protein in cells, polymerizes into filaments that play key roles in many cellular dynamics. To understand cell dynamics and functions, it is essential to examine the cytoskeleton structure organized by actin and actin-binding proteins. Here, we pave the way for determining the molecular assembly of the actin cytoskeleton using direct photonic in situ analysis, providing the photoluminescence characteristics of actin as a function of filament length and bundling, without labeling. In experiments for monomeric and filamentous actin reconstituted in vitro, structural forms of actin are identified from the peak positions and intensities of photoluminescence. Actin monomers exhibited small intensity emission peaks at 334 nm, whereas filamentous and bundled actin showed a shifted peak at 323 nm with higher intensity. The peak shift was found to be proportional to the length of the actin filament. With probing structural change of actin in various cells in vivo, our study provides an efficient and precise analytical in situ tool to examine the cytoskeleton structure. It will be beneficial for elucidating the mechanism of various cellular functions such as cell migration, differentiation, cytokinesis and adhesion. Furthermore, our technique can be applied to detect the alterations in the cell cytoskeleton that can occur during many pathological processes.

In order for super absorbent polymer (SAP) to be used in an application undergoing mechanical stress, it is necessary to regulate its shape and mechanical properties, which have been rarely studies. Here, spherical SAPs were prepared through inverse-suspension polymerization of partially neutralized acrylic acid monomers with ethylene glycol diacrylate (EGDA) crosslinkers. The surface region of SAP spheres was additionally crosslinked with ethylene glycol diglycidyl ether (EGDE) to improve the mechanical properties, producing a core-shell structure characterized by lightly crosslinked core and more densely crosslinked shell. Mechanical responses of the cross-linked SAP to global compression were obtained from experiments using a custom-made indentation device. The local mechanical properties of crosslinked surface were measured by atomic force microscopy. While the global responses of SAP were similar independent of surface crosslinking, the modulus of crosslinked surface increased as concentration of EGDE. In our experimental conditions, the surface modulus of surface crosslinked SAP was increased 2.7 folds, compared to that of SAP without surface crosslinking. The structure of SAP spheres with and without surface crosslinking was also visualized, and thickness of crosslinked surface was measured with fluorescence microscopy. We found that the thickness of crosslinked surface increased with increasing EGDE concentration but became saturated. Furthermore, a computational model was developed for core-shell SAP spheres using the measured mechanical properties, and was utilized to predict the thickness of crosslinked surface. Finally, we propose an analytical diffusion model that describes the diffusion and surface crosslinking reaction to elucidate the mechanism over which the mechanical and diffusion properties of SAP sphere are determined.

The development of pressure sensors that are effective over a broad range of pressures is crucial for the future development of electronic skin applicable to the detection of a wide pressure range from acoustic wave to dynamic human motion. Here, we present flexible capacitive pressure sensors that incorporate micropatterned pyramidal ionic gels to enable ultrasensitive pressure detection. Our devices show superior pressure-sensing performance, with a broad sensing range from a few pascals up to 50 kPa, with fast response times of

The feasibility of stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy using a solid immersion lens was investigated. First, the theoretical feasibility of the considered system is discussed based on a vectorial field algorithm that uses a stratified medium composed of a SIL air-gap and test sample. Using the simulation, we verified that evanescent waves with much higher spatial frequencies corresponding to the high numerical aperture in the air-gap can be utilized to achieve a higher resolution than a confocal fluorescent image without a depletion beam. The simulated expectation was supported by actual imaging on two types of samples: fluorescent beads with a 20 nm diameter and an actin sample with a filamentous structure. The lateral resolution of the system was determined to be 34 nm via the imaging results on the nano-beads. The system was quite promising for achieving nano-scale surface imaging of biological samples; an even higher resolution was achieved by adjusting the wavelength and the intensity of the depletion beam.

The fundamental challenge in designing transparent pressure sensors is the ideal combination of high optical transparency and high pressure sensitivity. Satisfying these competing demands is commonly achieved by a compromise between the transparency and usage of a patterned dielectric surface, which increases pressure sensitivity, but decreases transparency. Herein, a design strategy for fabricating high-transparency and high-sensitivity capacitive pressure sensors is proposed, which relies on the multiple states of nanoparticle dispersity resulting in enhanced surface roughness and light transmittance. We utilize two nanoparticle dispersion states on a surface: (i) homogeneous dispersion, where each nanoparticle (≈500 nm) with a size comparable to the visible light wavelength has low light scattering; and (ii) heterogeneous dispersion, where aggregated nanoparticles form a micrometer-sized feature, increasing pressure sensitivity. This approach is experimentally verified using a nanoparticle-dispersed polymer composite, which has high pressure sensitivity (1.0 kPa-1 ), and demonstrates excellent transparency (>95%). We demonstrate that the integration of nanoparticle-dispersed capacitor elements into an array readily yields a real-time pressure monitoring application and a fully functional touch device capable of acting as a pressure sensor-based input device, thereby opening up new avenues to establish processing techniques that are effective on the nanoscale yet applicable to macroscopic processing.

In this paper, the combined cue is different from each use of a visual cue and an auditory cue in BCI naive evaluations. This involves the simultaneous presentation of a visual cue and an auditory cue. According to the result of the experiment, the effect of combined cue is evaluated. In the case of the combined cue, the correlation of the combined cue and a visual cue was found to be higher than that noted in other conditions. The maximum performance increase was 6% from the worst performance case, with an average performance increase of 3%. For subject showing maximum performance, the accuracy was 90.3%.

In this paper, we evaluated BCI algorithm using CSP for finding out about realistic possibility of BCI based on neurofeedback. BCI algorithm that was comprised of CSP and 3 kinds of classifier such as least square linear classifier, SVM and linear discriminant analysis was evaluated in 10 people. According to the result of the experiment, the effect of neurofeedback is evaluated. And in case of neurofeedback, some subject is exceptional but general trend shows the performance improvement by neurofeedback. This study gives the need for adaptive evaluation of motor imagery using neurofeedback based EEG-BCI that can be related to generic and robust system for automated subject-specific classification of EEG based BCI system, development of EEG based BCI literacy performance evaluation system.