Dynamic Tuning of Viscoelastic Hydrogels with Carbonyl Iron Microparticles Reveals the Rapid Response of Cells to Three-Dimensional Substrate Mechanics.

Current methods to dynamically tune three-dimensional hydrogel mechanics require specific chemistries and substrates that make modest, slow, and often irreversible changes to their mechanical properties, exclude the use of protein-based scaffolds, or alter hydrogel microstructure and pore size. Here, we rapidly and reversibly alter the mechanical properties of hydrogels consisting of extracellular matrix proteins and proteoglycans by adding carbonyl iron microparticles (MP) and applying external magnetic fields. This approach drastically alters hydrogel mechanics: rheology reveals that application of a 4,000 Oe magnetic field to a 5 mg/mL collagen hydrogel containing 10 wt% MPs increases th…