(610g) Invited Talk: Sensing the Future: Synthetic Hydrogels As Catalysts for Biosensing and Regenerative Medicine

Early diagnosis of chronic systemic autoimmune diseases remains a major clinical challenge largely due to signs and symptoms being invisible at the early stages. To overcome this, there is a need to develop novel biosensors to detect changes in disease specific biomarker expression in biological fluids using stable and selective receptors. In this talk, I will discuss how recognitive nanogels were used in the development of a low cost, label-free biosensor for multiplexed detection of tear biomarkers associated with dry-eye. The biosensor developed combines unique sensing approaches by utilizing synthetic nanogels composed of monomers capable of forming complementary interactions with select tear proteins, and plasmon-based sensing to detect variations in biomarker expression through changes in refractive index.

In relation to applications in regenerative medicine, I will discuss how granular microscale hydrogels were utilized to investigate its influence on the mesenchymal stem/stromal cell secretome as a function of microgel size. Our results demonstrated that large microgels resulted in highly clustered phenotypes of mesenchymal stem/stromal cells due to increased cell-cell interactions via N-cadherin. This work highlights the need to further explore cell clustering through the use of biomaterial systems as a necessary strategy for potential cell-based therapeutics, which rely on