Tuning the cell and biological tissue environment through magneto-active materials

This review focuses on novel applications based on multifunctional materials to actuate biological processes. The first section of the work revisits the current knowledge on mechanically dependent biological processes across several scales from subcellular and cellular level to the cellcollective scale (continuum approaches). This analysis presents a wide variety of mechanically dependent biological processes on nervous system behaviour; bone development and healing; collective cell migration. In the second section, this review presents recent advances in smart materials suitable for use as cell substrates or scaffolds, with a special focus on magneto-active polymers (MAPs). Throughout the manuscript, both experimental and computational methodologies applied to the different treated topics are reviewed. Finally, the use of smart polymeric materials in bioengineering applications is discussed.This work has been supported by the Madrid Government (Comunidad de Madrid) under the Multiannual Agreement with UC3M in the line of "Fostering Young Doctors Research" (BIOMASKIN-CM-UC3M), and in the context of the V PRICIT (Regional Programme of Research and Technological Innovation, and support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 947723). DGG acknowledges support from the Talent Attraction grant (CM 2018-2018-T2/IND-9992) from the Comunidad de Madrid.Publicad

Magneto-mechanical system to reproduce and quantify complex strain patterns in biological materials

Biological cells and tissues are continuously subjected to mechanical stress and strain cues from their surrounding substrate. How these forces modulate cell and tissue behavior is a major question in mechanobiology. To conduct studies under controlled varying physiological strain scenarios, a new virtually-assisted experimental system is proposed allowing for non-invasive and real-time control of complex deformation modes within the substrates. This approach is based on the use of extremely soft magneto-active polymers, which mimic the stiffness of biological materials. Thus, the system enables the untethered control of biological substrates providing reversible mechanical changes and controlling heterogeneous patterns. Motivated on a deep magneto-mechanical characterization across scales, a multi-physics and multi-scale in silico framework was developed to guide the experimental stimulation setup. The versatility and viability of the system have been demonstrated through its ability to reproduce complex mechanical scenarios simulating local strain patterns in brain tissue during a head impact, and its capability to transmit physiologically relevant mechanical forces to dermal fibroblasts. The proposed framework opens the way to understanding the mechanobiological processes that occur during complex and dynamic deformation states, e.g., in traumatic brain injury, pathological skin scarring or fibrotic heart remodeling during myocardial infarction.The authors thank Denis Wirtz (Johns Hopkins University) and Jean-Christophe Olivo-Marin (Institute Pasteur) for relevant discussion. The authors acknowledge support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program (Grant agreement No. 947723, project: 4D-BIOMAP), and from Programa de Apoyo a la Realizacion de Proyectos Interdiscisplinares de I+D para Jovenes Investigadores de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and Comunidad de Madrid (project: BIOMASKIN). MAMM and CGC acknowledges support from the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades, Spain (FPU19/03874 and FPU20/01459) and DGG acknowledges support from the Talent Attraction grant (CM 2018 - 2018-T2/IND-9992) from the Comunidad de Madrid

Tuning the Cell and Biological Tissue Environment through Magneto-Active Materials

This review focuses on novel applications based on multifunctional materials to actuate biological processes. The first section of the work revisits the current knowledge on mechanically dependent biological processes across several scales from subcellular and cellular level to the cell-collective scale (continuum approaches). This analysis presents a wide variety of mechanically dependent biological processes on nervous system behaviour; bone development and healing; collective cell migration. In the second section, this review presents recent advances in smart materials suitable for use as cell substrates or scaffolds, with a special focus on magneto-active polymers (MAPs). Throughout the manuscript, both experimental and computational methodologies applied to the different treated topics are reviewed. Finally, the use of smart polymeric materials in bioengineering applications is discussed