Dynamic Viscoelastic Hydrogels as Cell Culture Models of Fibrotic Disease

Hydrogels have proven useful in a range of human health applications because of their ability to mimic salient tissue properties including high water content, controlled ligand presentation, and soft tissue mechanics. Recent advances in hydrogel design are increasingly moving away from static, monolithic platforms and toward dynamic, interactive, and responsive materials that capture the complexity of native cellular microenvironments in wound healing and tissue regeneration. My group engineers instructive biomaterials to tackle human health challenges including treatment of fibrotic disease and repair of injured tissues. In this talk I will discuss our progress on designing hydrogels as disease models that recapitulate the dynamic mechanical properties of fibrosis. Specifically, I will present our latest results on quantifying normal and fibrotic tissue mechanics to inform biomaterial design where we independently assess the influence of hydrogel stiffness, viscoelasticity, and integrin engagement on fibroblast behavior.

Steven joined the faculty of the University of Virginia in 2016 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering with a secondary appointment in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2022. Prior to joining UVA he was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Steven completed his B.S. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Florida and received both his M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His lab designs biomaterials to study the dynamic reciprocity between cells and their microenvironment, applying these platforms to address fundamental human health challenges in understanding disease and engineering tissues. Steven has received the NIH (NIGMS) Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA), NSF CAREER award, and was named a 2021 Young Innovator in Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering. His lab is grateful for generous support over the years from the NIH, DoD, NSF, V Foundation, Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation, and UVA-Coulter Translational Research Partnership.