Periodontal disease is characterized by inflamed gingival tissues and degradation of the gingival extracellular matrix (ECM), yet the role of mechanical cues remains poorly understood. Gingival ECM in periodontal disease showed reduced fibrillar collagen compared to healthy samples. We hypothesized that ECM softening in periodontal disease contributes to inflammation by dysregulating gingival fibroblasts (GFs). A mechanically tunable hydrogel model of the gingival ECM was developed to investigate the mechano-immune crosstalk. Stiff and soft collagen-alginate hydrogels matched the rheological properties of healthy and diseased gingival biopsies respectively. Human donor GFs encapsulated in these stiff hydrogels showed significantly suppressed toll-like receptor-mediated inflammatory responses compared to those in soft hydrogels. The non-canonical NFκB pathway and epigenetic nuclear organization directed stiffness-dependent inflammatory responses of GFs. The direct impact of mechanical cues on immune responses was investigated ex vivo by co-culture of donor-derived human GFs with myeloid cells and in human gingival explants. Myeloid progenitors co-cultured with GFs in stiff hydrogels differentiated into immunomodulatory dendritic cells. Ex vivo crosslinking of human gingival tissue increased stiffness and reduced the production of inflammatory cytokines. Gingival mechano-immune regulation offers a novel approach to biomaterial-based treatments for periodontitis.
Advanced holographic techniques are increasingly demanded for high-capacity and secure information processing. In this context, orbital angular momentum (OAM) stands out as a powerful resource for optical multiplexing, offering access to an unbounded set of orthogonal modes. To harness this potential, metasurfaces, with their considerable ability to control light, have emerged as key platforms for OAM-multiplexed holography. Nevertheless, conventional OAM holography suffers from limited polarization engineering capabilities due to the lack of chirality control in single-layer metasurfaces. Here, we introduce a bi-layer metasurface architecture that realizes total angular momentum (TAM) vectorial holography, where TAM represents the combination of spin angular momentum (SAM, equivalent to polarization) and OAM of light. In contrast to previous approaches, this scheme enables true polarization-OAM multiplexing, facilitating the independent generation of vectorial holographic images for each orthogonal TAM input state. This concept is validated numerically and experimentally, confirming the feasibility of TAM vectorial holography. The proposed scheme can be easily integrated with other recent holography generation approaches, such as vector beam multiplexing and bidirectional holography, thereby further expanding its multiplexing capability. This work establishes a versatile framework for advanced full-vectorial holography, showing how metasurfaces can unlock multiplexing strategies for emerging photonic systems.

