7E: Granular & Macroporous Biomaterials for Tissue Engineering 1

Granular hydrogel materials emerged as a class of biomaterial that provide for well-defined in vitro and in vivo systems with plug-and-play components and tissue-mimicking 3D environments. Granular hydrogels are composed of a slurry of microgel particles that are assembled to form a larger porous structure. Microporous annealed particle (MAP) scaffolds are a subclass of granular hydrogel material with a void space network stabilized by inter-particle chemical bonds. The modular nature of granular hydrogels offers enormous tunability in not only the individual microgel design but also the homogenous or heterogenous microgel assembly into the bulk scaffold. This session will explore current advances in granular hydrogel technology, including MAP scaffolds, for both immune modulation, tissue repair, organ-on-a-chip, and 3D-printing applications