Dear Chi,

biomaterial stiffness iis not so well standardized all around in the lab, there are goup measuring with AFm microscope, other group with rheometer and so on. Hence my advice is to try at least 3 different stiffness for your experiments and overal with the material you plan to use. In our group we wrok with PEG-Fibrinogen adn we see the effect of this material in stemness mantainance at higher stiffness (800-1000 Pa) that we normaly use for differentiation (300-400 Pa); we are talking about encapsulated cell in the gel and not cell layered over a substrate!!!! 

Goo luck

Dear Chi,

There are commercially available Matrixes at different stiffness ranging from 30 Pa to 50 KPa from the company called Matrigen. http://www.matrigen.com/

For choosing the right stiffness for your cell type you can use following linkhttp://www.cellgs.com/Shop/Matrigen-Softwell.html

They have also listed some good reference below on this webpage, that might help you to find what you are looking for.

Thanks and good Luck.

Sincerely,

Manisha