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Fibrotic disorders account for over one third of mortalities worldwide. Despite great efforts to study the cellular and molecular processes underlying fibrosis, there are currently few effective therapies. Dual-stage polymerization reactions are an innovative tool for recreating heterogeneous increases in extracellular matrix (ECM) modulus, a hallmark of fibrotic diseases in vivo . Here, we present a clickable decellularized ECM (dECM) crosslinker incorporated into a dynamically responsive poly(ethylene glycol)-α-methacrylate (PEGαMA) hybrid-hydrogel to recreate ECM remodeling in vitro . An off-stoichiometry thiol–ene Michael addition between PEGαMA (8-arm, 10 kg mol −1 ) and the clickable dECM resulted in hydrogels with an elastic modulus of E = 3.6 ± 0.24 kPa, approximating healthy lung tissue (1–5 kPa). Next, residual αMA groups were reacted via a photo-initiated homopolymerization to increase modulus values to fibrotic levels ( E = 13.4 ± 0.82 kPa) in situ . Hydrogels with increased elastic moduli, mimicking fibrotic ECM, induced a significant increase in the expression of myofibroblast transgenes. The proportion of primary fibroblasts from dual-reporter mouse lungs expressing collagen 1a1 and alpha-smooth muscle actin increased by approximately 60% when cultured on stiff and dynamically stiffened hybrid-hydrogels compared to soft. Likewise, fibroblasts expressed significantly increased levels of the collagen 1a1 transgene on stiff regions of spatially patterned hybrid-hydrogels compared to the soft areas. Collectively, these results indicate that hybrid-hydrogels are a new tool that can be implemented to spatiotemporally induce a phenotypic transition in primary murine fibroblasts in vitro . 

A search for decays to invisible particles of Higgs bosons produced in association with a top-antitop quark pair or a vector boson, which both decay to a fully hadronic final state, has been performed using proton-proton collision data collected at$${\sqrt{s}=13\,\text {Te}\hspace{-.08em}\text {V}}$$$\sqrt{s}=13\text{Te}\text{V}$by the CMS experiment at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138$$\,\text {fb}^{-1}$$${\text{fb}}^{-1}$. The 95% confidence level upper limit set on the branching fraction of the 125$$\,\text {Ge}\hspace{-.08em}\text {V}$$$\text{Ge}\text{V}$Higgs boson to invisible particles,$${\mathcal {B}({\textrm{H}} \rightarrow \text {inv})}$$$B(\text{H}\to \text{inv})$, is 0.54 (0.39 expected), assuming standard model production cross sections. The results of this analysis are combined with previous$${\mathcal {B}({\textrm{H}} \rightarrow \text {inv})}$$$B(\text{H}\to \text{inv})$searches carried out at$${\sqrt{s}=7}$$$\sqrt{s}=7$, 8, and 13$$\,\text {Te}\hspace{-.08em}\text {V}$$$\text{Te}\text{V}$in complementary production modes. The combined upper limit at 95% confidence level on$${\mathcal {B}({\textrm{H}} \rightarrow \text {inv})}$$$B(\text{H}\to \text{inv})$is 0.15 (0.08 expected).