Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Strathclyde, Wolfson Centre, 106 Rottenrow, Glasgow G4 0NW, UK.
J Biomech. 2013 Feb 22;46(4):837-40. doi: 10.1016/j.jbiomech.2012.11.048. Epub 2012 Dec 23.
Reconstituted collagen hydrogels are often used for in vitro studies of cell-matrix interaction and as scaffolds for tissue engineering. Understanding the mechanical and transport behaviours of collagen hydrogels is therefore extremely important, albeit difficult due to their very high water content (typically >99.5%). In the present study the mechanical behaviour of collagen hydrogels in confined compression was investigated using biphasic theory (J Biomechemical Engineering 102 (1980) 73), to ascertain whether the technique is sufficiently sensitive to determine differences in the characteristics of hydrogels of between 0.2% and 0.4% collagen. Peak stress, equilibrium stress, aggregate modulus and hydraulic permeability of the hydrogels exhibited sensitivity to collagen content, demonstrating that the technique is clearly able to discriminate between hydrogels with small differences in collagen content and may also be sensitive to factors that affect matrix remodelling. The results also offer additional insight into the deformation-dependent permeability of collagen hydrogels. This study suggests that confined compression, together with biphasic theory, is a suitable technique for assessing the mechanical properties of collagen hydrogels.
重构胶原水凝胶常用于细胞-基质相互作用的体外研究，以及组织工程的支架。因此，了解胶原水凝胶的力学和传输特性非常重要，尽管由于其含水量非常高（通常>99.5%），这是非常困难的。在本研究中，使用双相理论（J Biomechanical Engineering 102（1980）73）研究了胶原水凝胶在约束压缩下的力学行为，以确定该技术是否足够灵敏，以确定 0.2%和 0.4%之间胶原水凝胶的特性差异。水凝胶的峰值应力、平衡应力、聚集模量和水力渗透率对胶原含量敏感，表明该技术能够清楚地区分水凝胶中胶原含量的微小差异，并且可能对影响基质重塑的因素也敏感。结果还提供了对胶原水凝胶变形相关渗透性的额外了解。这项研究表明，约束压缩与双相理论相结合，是评估胶原水凝胶力学性能的一种合适技术。
