Development of a High Throughput Microsphere System for Annealed Hydrogels

Poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) gels are step-growth hydrogel networks that can be formed using thiol-ene polymerization. Four-arm PEG monomers can be functionalized with norbornene and then crosslinked with matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) degradable sequences. Current techniques to understanding angiogenesis involves using type I collagen which can be modified with various angiogenic factors to study different aspects of angiogenesis. However, the coupling of bulk and ligand densities prevents us from studying the effect of varying densities on cell invasion. This can be overcome by using a submerged electrospray to generate microspheres, which utilizes high voltage to overcome surface tension and results in the formation of droplets. The purpose of this proposal is to develop and characterize a microsphere system capable of accelerated wound healing by means of invasion depth manipulation via ligand and bulk density variation, as well as by means of porosity manipulation via submerged electrospraying droplet generation