Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting | Ascona 2026

Mechanobiology of Infection

Poster Abstracts

30-POS Board 30 INVESTIGATING THE EFFECT OF TISSUE STIFFNESS ON UTI PERSISTENCE Vishwa Vasani ; John McKinney EPFL, School of Life Sciences (SV), Lausanne, Switzerland Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) globally impact over 200 million people each year, and among these, about 30% patients have recurrent infections despite apparently successful initial antibiotic treatment. Bacterial infections elicit an inflammatory response in the bladder, and prolonged inflammation can result in thicker, fibrosed bladder tissue. We are interested in investigating how a stiffer bladder wall impacts UTI persistence, particularly if it potentiates a feedback loop that sustains prolonged infections .To this aim, we will utilize a silicone micro insert-based bladder mimicking model. These are alternatives to Transwells that maintain a separated fluidic access to both apical and basal sides of the epithelial tissue, while additionally enabling customizable cell-gel interface. For the custom cell-gel interface, tunable stiffness polyacrylamide (PAAm) hydrogels will be used. Stiffness of healthy and cystitis bladders are found to span 3 - 25 kPa based on Shear Wave Elastography measurements, so we will operate within this range. Polyacrylamide surface will be functionalized by sulfo-SANPAH-enabled cross-linking with Collagen. Micro-insert based stratified and differentiated urothelium model will be established by adapting our existing Transwell protocol. Infection studies will be performed with UPEC strains in Synthetic Human Urine in the apical chamber. Two different strains of UPEC will be used, which span a wide range of invasion abilities – the well characterized CFT073 as well as the hyper-invasive clinical isolate ECZD9P. Bacterial persistence and antibiotic efficacy will be monitored and quantified by live cell imaging. This workflow will help address questions whether a stiff bladder wall predisposes UTI patients to repeated infections and antibiotic resistance. If so, it would then help design novel combination therapeutics that alleviate stiffness-sensitive persistence mechanisms. This in turn potentially helps combat the rising antibiotic resistance crisis by presenting alternate therapeutic strategies.

67