Prestressed Composite Polymer Gels as a Model of the Extracellular-Matrix of Cartilage

Alexandros Chremos; Jack F Douglas; Peter J Basser; Ferenc Horkay

doi:10.3390/gels8110707

Prestressed Composite Polymer Gels as a Model of the Extracellular-Matrix of Cartilage

Gels. 2022 Nov 2;8(11):707. doi: 10.3390/gels8110707.

Authors

Alexandros Chremos¹, Jack F Douglas², Peter J Basser¹, Ferenc Horkay¹

Affiliations

¹ Section on Quantitative Imaging and Tissue Sciences, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
² Materials Science and Engineering Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA.

Abstract

Articular cartilage is a composite hydrogel found in animal and human joints, which exhibits unique load-bearing properties that have been challenging to reproduce in synthetic materials and model in molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. We computationally investigate a composite hydrogel that mimics key functional properties of articular cartilage as a potential biomimetic model to investigate its unique load-bearing properties. Specifically, we find that the emergence of prestress in composite gels derives primarily from the stiffness of the polymer matrix and the asymmetry in the enthalpic interactions of the embedded particles and polymer matrix. Our MD simulations of the development of prestress agree qualitatively with osmotic pressure measurements observed in our model composite hydrogel material.

Keywords: cartilage; extracellular matrix; gels.

Grants and funding

This research was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, NIH.