Hydrogels have been utilized in regenerative applications for many decades because of their biocompatibility and similarity in structure to the native extracellular matrix. Initially, these materials were formed outside of the patient and implanted using invasive surgical techniques. However, advances in synthetic chemistry and materials science have now provided researchers with a library of techniques whereby hydrogel formation can occur in situ upon delivery through standard needles. This provides an avenue to minimally invasively deliver therapeutic payloads, fill complex tissue defects, and induce the regeneration of damaged portions of the body. In this review, we highlight these injectable therapeutic hydrogel biomaterials in the context of drug delivery and tissue regeneration for skin wound repair.
Integrin binding to bioengineered hydrogel scaffolds is essential for tissue regrowth and regeneration, yet not all integrin binding can lead to tissue repair. Here, we show that through engineering hydrogel materials to promote α3/α5β1 integrin binding, we can promote the formation of a space filling and mature vasculature compared to hydrogel materials that promote a αvβ3 integrin binding. In vitro, α3/α5β1 scaffolds promoted endothelial cells to sprout and branch, forming organized extensive networks that eventually reached and anastomosed with neighboring branches. In vivo, α3/α5β1 scaffolds delivering vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) promoted non-tortuous blood vessel formation and non-leaky blood vessels by 10-days post stroke. In contrast, materials that promote αvβ3 integrin binding promoted endothelial sprout clumping in vitro and leaky vessels in vivo. This work shows that precisely controlled integrin activation from a biomaterial can be harnessed to direct therapeutic vessel regeneration and reduce VEGF induced vascular permeability in vivo.
Techniques to analyze and sort single cells based on functional outputs, such as secreted products, have the potential to transform our understanding of cellular biology, as well as accelerate the development of next generation cell and antibody therapies. However, secreted molecules rapidly diffuse away from cells, and analysis of these products requires specialized equipment and expertise to compartmentalize individual cells and capture their secretions. Herein we demonstrate the use of suspendable microcontainers to sort single viable cells based on their secreted products at high-throughput using only commonly accessible laboratory infrastructure. Our microparticles act as solid supports which facilitate cell attachment, partition uniform aqueous compartments, and capture secreted proteins. Using this platform, we demonstrate highthroughput screening of stably-and transiently-transfected producer cells based on relative IgG production as well as screening of B lymphocytes and hybridomas based on antigen-specific antibody production using commercially available flow sorters. Leveraging the high-speed sorting capabilities of standard sorters, we sorted >1,000,000 events in less than an hour. The reported microparticles can be easily stored, and distributed as a consumable reagent amongst researchers, democratizing access to high-throughput functional cell screening.
Microparticles with defined shapes and spatial chemical modification can enable new opportunities to interface with cells and tissues at the cellular scale. However, conventional methods to fabricate shaped microparticles have trade-offs between the throughput of manufacture and precision of particle shape and chemical functionalization. Here, we achieved scalable production of hydrogel microparticles at rates of greater than 40 million/hour with localized surface chemistry using a parallelized step emulsification device and temperature-induced phase-
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