Santos, M. I. et. al., Materials Today Advances, 2025, 28, 100666, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mtadv.2025.100666
Expansion microscopy (ExM) enables super-resolution visualization using standard light microscopes. This study presents a novel hydrogel formulation based solely on DMAA that omits acrylamide (AA) and sodium acrylate (SA) to achieve superior mechanical properties and is compatible with a range of solvents, including ethanol, isopropanol, and acetone. By enabling high-fidelity imaging of biological samples in diverse solvent environments, this DMAA-based gel system substantially broadens the applicability of ExM, opening new possibilities for integrating it with complex labeling workflows requiring organic solvents and enabling future correlative microscopy studies across multiple imaging platforms. © 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access