Cartilaginous microtissues exhibit extreme resilience under compression with size-dependent mechanical properties.

ABSTRACT: Self-assembled cartilaginous microtissues provide a promising means of repairing challenging skeletal defects and connective tissues. However, despite their considerable promise in tissue engineering, the mechanical response of these engineered microtissues is not well understood. Here we examine the mechanical and viscoelastic response of progenitor cell aggregates formed from human primary periosteal cells and the resulting cartilaginous microtissues under large deformations as might be encountered in vivo. We find that the mechanical response of these tissues is strongly size dependent due to surface tension effects, with a scaling law for the Young's modulus of E ∝ D^m, where D is the diameter of the tissues, and m varies with the tissue type. Similar size effects are found t

SUBMITTER: Androulidakis C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11850221 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature