Manish Ayushman

Articular cartilage injury represents a leading cause of disability, yet effective therapies remain elusive. Hydrogels are attractive injectable biomaterials for mesenchymal stem cell (MSC)-based cartilage repair, yet they generally lead to slow cartilage regeneration with poor mechanical strength. Furthermore, no hydrogels developed to date allow precise tuning of molecular mobility, which is critical for cells to physically re-organize their surrounding niche during cartilage development. The goal of my proposal is to validate sliding hydrogels with tunable mobility as a novel biomaterial tool to enhance MSC-based cartilage regeneration in vivo and to elucidate the involved molecular mechanisms by characterizing mechanosensing and chromatin biology.