Biomaterials
“We can just leave the hydrogel inside the body and let the wound heal,” says Bao. “After a while, we hope the tissue would resume its original functions.”
The path to the clinic
In the months since their paper was published, the researchers have been working on ways to improve the hydrogel further still. “We now have an enhanced version of the hydrogel, which has shown an even better performance than the one described in our paper,” say Bao. “We are just about to start testing our hydrogel in animal models, beginning by testing its biocompatibility and biodegradation properties inside rodents.” Should the results prove positive, the team will move onto larger animal models, such as rabbits or pigs. They will be looking to test the hydrogel’s overall safety, as well as its wound-healing efficacy. Eventually, they hope to apply for permission to conduct human clinical trials.
The hydrogel was tested in a bioreactor that could accurately reconstruct the biomechanics of a human vocal cord.
How the hydrogel works As the team detailed in their 2021 paper, published in the journal Advanced Science, the hydrogel can withstand an extreme degree of mechanical loading. They tested it in a bioreactor, designed to simulate the biomechanics of human vocal cords. It stayed intact throughout six million cycles of 120Hz vibrations, equivalent to someone talking for two hours each day for a week.
By way of control, they also subjected two rival hydrogels to the same mechanical conditions. The first “disintegrated into small particles that were washed away by the perfusion media”, while the second “fractured into multiple disjoint chunks”.
entirely by the new tissues that are generated by the native cells of the human body,”
While the hydrogel is a liquid before injection, once delivered into the human body it would form a solid construct. This would provide physical support to the wounded area, as well recruiting cells from the surrounding tissues. Over time, the cells would migrate inside the structure, secrete proteins to repair the injury, and start to remodel the damaged tissue. The hydrogel itself would degrade. “Eventually, our material would be replaced entirely by the new tissues that are generated by the native cells of the human body,” says Bao. By way of example, a surgeon might inject the hydrogel into the surgical site following tumour removal. The hydrogel would stop the bleeding, before adhering to the wound without the need for suturing.
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“I’m really excited to see the results we achieve next,” says Bao. “I cannot wait to share our recent progress, and also the results of our upcoming animal studies, to the field and to the public.”
Although their hydrogel could have multiple applications inside the body, the researchers are currently focusing on the vocal cords, along with skin wound repair. For instance, they think the hydrogel could be used to restore vocal cord activity in laryngeal cancer survivors.
“The reason we’re targeting the vocal cords and the skin is because we have the expertise in doing that research,” says Bao. “We know how to optimise our material, to make it an efficient means of repairing wounds that doesn’t cause too great an immune response. That means it can be more actively incorporated inside the human body for the long term.”
Cardiac tissue repair is also a possibility, although Bao stresses that his team have not explored this angle directly.
“Our hydrogel is not specifically designed for the vocal cords and we believe it can be also used for cardiac tissue regeneration,” he says. “But it definitely has more to do to prove its efficacy here before we can say that for certain. Based on our initial results, we hope we can attract researchers from the cardiac tissue engineering field, who can adapt our materials for their studies.” It’s early days for this hydrogel – as it is for so many areas of regenerative medicine. However, there are certainly grounds for optimism. Thanks to the ingenuity of researchers like the team at McGill, what once seemed like impossible challenges are rapidly proving surmountable. ●
Medical Device Developments /
www.nsmedicaldevices.com
McGill University
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