Biomimetic Presentation of Cryptic Ligands via Single-Chain Nanogels for Synergistic Regulation of Stem Cells

Dynamic controlling the nanoscale presentation of synergistic ligands to stem cells by biomimetic single-chain materials can provide critical insights to understand the molecular crosstalk underlying cells and their extracellular matrix. Here, a stimuli-responsive single-chain macromolecular nano-regulator with conformational dynamics is fabricated based on advanced scale-up single polymeric chain nanogel (SCNG). Such carefully-designed SCNG is capable of mediating triggered co-presentation of the master and cryptic ligands in a single molecule to elicit the synergistic crosstalk between different intracellular signaling pathways, thereby considerably boosting the bioactivity of the presented ligands. This controllable nanoswitching-on of cell‐adhesive ligands' presentation allows regulation of cell adhesion and fate from molecular scale. The modular nature of this synthetic macromolecular nano-regulator makes it a versatile nanomaterial platform to assist basic and fundamental studies in a wide array of research topics.