{"doi":"10.1002/adma.202401745","title":"Mucus‐Inspired Self‐Healing Hydrogels: A Protective Barrier for Cells against Viral Infection","abstract":"Mucus is a dynamic biological hydrogel, composed primarily of the glycoprotein mucin, exhibits unique biophysical properties and forms a barrier protecting cells against a broad-spectrum of viruses. Here, this work develops a polyglycerol sulfate-based dendronized mucin-inspired copolymer (MICP-1) with ≈10% repeating units of activated disulfide as cross-linking sites. Cryo-electron microscopy (Cryo-EM) analysis of MICP-1 reveals an elongated single-chain fiber morphology. MICP-1 shows potential inhibitory activity against many viruses such as herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) and SARS-CoV-2 (including variants such as Delta and Omicron). MICP-1 produces hydrogels with viscoelastic properties similar to healthy human sputum and with tuneable microstructures using linear and branched polyethylene glycol-thiol (PEG-thiol) as cross-linkers. Single particle tracking microrheology, electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) and cryo-scanning electron microscopy (Cryo-SEM) are used to characterize the network structures. The synthesized hydrogels exhibit self-healing properties, along with viscoelastic properties that are tuneable through reduction. A transwell assay is used to investigate the hydrogel's protective properties against viral infection against HSV-1. Live-cell microscopy confirms that these hydrogels can protect underlying cells from infection by trapping the virus, due to both network morphology and anionic multivalent effects. Overall, this novel mucin-inspired copolymer generates mucus-mimetic hydrogels on a multi-gram scale. These hydrogels can be used as models for disulfide-rich airway mucus research, and as biomaterials.","journal":"Advanced Materials","year":2024,"id":420658,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":33,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9562,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1212192,"name":"Corey A. Stevens","orcid":"0000-0002-9619-7869","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1212193,"name":"Chuanxiong Nie","orcid":"0000-0001-7963-1187","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1212194,"name":"Kai Ludwig","orcid":"0000-0001-6808-8107","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1212195,"name":"George D. Degen","orcid":"0000-0002-7386-506X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1212196,"name":"Yannic Kerkhoff","orcid":"0000-0002-8126-2082","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1212197,"name":"М. А. Пигалева","orcid":"0000-0001-7483-1294","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1162568,"name":"Julia M. Adler","orcid":"0000-0001-8147-0351","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1040721,"name":"Nicole A. Bustos","orcid":"0000-0002-3074-5957","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1212198,"name":"Taylor M. Page","orcid":"0000-0002-5075-7111","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":230484,"name":"Jakob Trimpert","orcid":"0000-0003-1616-0810","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1212199,"name":"Stephan Block","orcid":"0000-0002-2947-0837","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":766633,"name":"Benedikt B. Kaufer","orcid":"0000-0003-1328-2695","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":290720,"name":"Katharina Ribbeck","orcid":"0000-0001-8260-338X","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":839323,"name":"Rainer Haag","orcid":"0000-0003-3840-162X","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1212191,"name":"Raju Bej","orcid":"0000-0002-8453-6966","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":69,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:57:31.041511Z","pmid":"38815174","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}