Controllable Wetting Transitions on Photoswitchable Physical Gels.

Softness plays a key role in the deformation of soft elastic substrates at the three-phase contact line, and the acting forces lead to the formation of a wetting ridge due to elastocapillarity. The change in wetting ridge and surface profiles at different softness has a great impact on the droplet behavior in different phenomena. Commonly used materials to study soft wetting are swollen polymeric gels or polymer brushes.

Extrusion-Based 3D Bioprinting of Gradients of Stiffness, Cell Density, and Immobilized Peptide Using Thermogelling Hydrogels.

To study biological processes , biomaterials-based engineering solutions to reproduce the gradients observed in tissues are necessary. We present a platform for the 3D bioprinting of functionally graded biomaterials based on carboxylated agarose, a bioink amendable by extrusion bioprinting. Using this bioink, objects with a gradient of stiffness and gradient of cell concentration were printed.

Hydrogel-Forming Algae Polysaccharides: From Seaweed to Biomedical Applications.

With the increasing growth of the algae industry and the development of algae biorefinery, there is a growing need for high-value applications of algae-extracted biopolymers. The utilization of such biopolymers in the biomedical field can be considered as one of the most attractive applications but is challenging to implement. Historically, polysaccharides extracted from seaweed have been used for a long time in biomedical research, for example, agarose gels for electrophoresis and bacterial culture.