Bioscaffold Hydrogel Material Degrades as Bone Grows to Replace It

Rice University bioengineers have created a hydrogel that is a liquid at room temperature but, when injected into a patient, becomes a gel that would fill and stabilize a space while natural tissue grows to replace it. The gel shows potential as a bioscaffold to support the regrowth of bone and other three-dimensional tissues in a patient's body using the patient's own cells to seed the process.

Transcript

00:00:01 [Music] what I'm about to show you is is a dual gelation process the first is the thermogelation which is strictly driven by the temperature so what we have is a a cold polymer sitting at a little below room temperature so it's easy to handle and when it gets increased up to body temperature it undergos a thermogelation which is a hardening to encapsulate any

00:00:24 potential stem cells or growth factors that might be incorporated uh what we've also done is incorporated a secondary gelation component that stabilizes that gel and prevents it from breaking down after the primary gelation has occurred and what's that what that is driven by is by the other component the initiator and the accelerator which we will add immediately before we inject it into the

00:00:44 mold so what this platform offers is a way to inject uh minimally in a minimally invasive fashion into defects especially in the cranial facial region which was this designed for and to deliver stem cells or growth factors into this region that can help regenerate bone the idea being that if you deliver these stem cells in they can immediately start down an a lineage that

00:01:06 will help them to produce bone and this would accelerate the process uh especially in large defects where uh traditional therapies such as harvesting from other places in the body are not really available because you really have a limited supply of other bone you can take from elsewhere in your body