THE MATRIX: BUILDING MORE BIOACTIVE EXTRACELLULAR MATRICES VIA TUNING OF SUBSTRATE STIFFNESS

Abstract

Background & Aim Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) have long been at the forefront of cellular therapy and regenerative medicine, and they are being explored in more than 700 NIH-funded trials for their therapeutic potential. The low frequency of MSCs in the human body, poor yield of MSCs from tissue biopsies, and high number of MSCs required for clinical applications demand that tissue-isolated MSCs undergo a lengthy expansion ex vivo, during which they exhibit senescence and become unsuitable for therapeutic applications. Decellularized extracellular matrices (dECM) present a novel solution to this issue, as MSCs grown on dECM maintain greater viability as compared to those grown on convent..