Novel approaches for patterning hierarchical hydrogels

Synthetic hydrogels featuring tunable biological functionalities and hierarchical structures are of compelling interest as scaffolds for tissue engineering applications. With the expectation of regulating cell fate within the soft materials, many efforts have been placed on creating niches that can mimic the complexity of the native extracellular matrix. In this study, a sacrificial moulding process was used to produce porous hydrogels, while two patterning approaches were developed to site-specifically immobilize molecules inside the hydrogels, resembling natural extracellular matrix networks in terms of geometrical interconnectivity and cell-guidance functionalization. The simple approaches allow reproducible control over the size and architecture of the channels, as well as the spatial distribution and concentration of the patterning molecules, enabling controlled study of cell-substrate behaviour