Bioengineers from Rice University have
developed a temperature-sensitive gel that starts as a liquid, solidifies
into a gel in the body and then liquefies again for removal. The material has
been designed for use as a scaffold material for bone regeneration in the head
and face.
The gel -- poly(N-isopropylacrylamide), or PNiPAAm
-- has been designed to be injected into the body to help direct the formation
of new bone that has been lost or damaged through injury or disease. At room
temperature it is liquid, but it turns into a more solid gel at body
temperature. It could act as an alternative to prefabricated implantable
scaffolds.
The material has been developed in the
bioengineering lab of Antonios
Mikos. Mikos said: "This new platform technology leverages injectable,
thermally responsive, chemically crosslinkable and bioresorbable hydrogels for
regenerative medicine applications. It enables the formation of scaffolds
locally and the delivery of growth factors and stem cells into defects of
complex anatomical shapes with minimal surgical intervention."
PNiPAAm's cross-linking technology lets the researchers eliminate shrinkage
of the gel, which improves its stability so that it can deliver growth factors
and stem cell populations to the area being treated. Once enough bone tissue
has regenerated to fill the area, the scaffold can be turned back into a liquid
state and reabsorbed by the body.Mikos believes that the ability to encapsulate stem cell populations with these sorts of temperature-sensitive injectable gel scaffolds will have "enormous implications for the development of novel therapeutics for craniofacial bone regeneration".
A paper on the
research has been authored by Tiffany Vo, a fourth-year doctoral graduate
student in Mikos' lab, and colleagues.
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