Owing to highly tunable mechanics, gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) hydrogels are widely exploited for three-dimensional (3D) cell culture, whereas limited experimental sampling restricts efficient formulation screening. In this work, we developed a BNN-based modeling pipeline to map GelMA hydrogels with various cross-linking parameters toward linear viscoelastic moduli and nonlinear critical stress, thereby categorizing all tested formulations into low/intermediate/high stable mechanical windows. Calibration on C2C12 myoblast morphologies confirmed that nonlinear critical stress complements linear rheological parameters to refine the screening priority of cell-compatible hydrogel recipes. Subsequent validation with primary cardiomyocytes demonstrated consistent morphological trends matching the predefined mechanical windows, alongside ambiguous boundary formulations. Our findings construct a bounded prioritization strategy to rapidly select GelMA compositions under sparse experimental conditions, with further prospective validations demanded before generalized predictive use for diverse tissue engineering scenarios.
Yin et al. (Tue,) studied this question.