University College London (UCL) researchers developed a hydrogel-based axon model designed to improve preclinical testing for multiple sclerosis remyelination therapies by matching more realistic physical properties of human axons. In a Nature Methods paper, the team reported tunable micropillar arrays made of polyacrylamide hydrogel—allowing researchers to adjust diameter, spacing and stiffness to reproduce the geometry and ~5 kPa softness of native axons. When the platform was tuned to physiologically relevant softness, performance of candidate remyelination drugs dropped, suggesting earlier rigid-model systems may have produced misleading hits. The study seeded human and rodent oligodendrocytes on the hydrogel pillars and used the model to test multiple remyelination drugs, connecting mechanical mismatch to translational failure risk. The work is positioned as a mechanobiology-driven advance in the push for more predictive, human-relevant preclinical systems for neurodegenerative disease programs.