Fibro-gel: An All-aqueous Hydrogel Consisting of Microfibers with Tunable Release Profile and its Application in Wound Healing.

Injectable hydrogels are valuable tools in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine due to the unique advantages of injectability with minimal invasiveness and usability for irregularly shaped sites. However, it remains challenging to achieve scalable manufacturing together with matching physicochemical properties and on-demand drug release for a high level of control over biophysical and biomedical cues to direct endogenous cells. Here, we demonstrate the use of an injectable fibro-gel, a water-filled network of entangled hydrogel microfibers, whose physicochemical properties and drug release profiles can be tailored to overcome these shortcomings. This fibro-gel exhibits favorable in vitro biocompatibility and the capability to aid vascularization. The potential use of the fibro-gel for advancing tissue regeneration is explored with a mice excision skin model. Preliminary in vivo tests indicate that the fibro-gel promotes wound healing with a faster rate of new tissue regeneration and the appearance of de novo regenerated healthy tissue when compared with a commercial gel. Moreover, we demonstrate that the release of distinct drugs at different rates can further accelerate wound healing with higher efficiency by using a two-layer fibro-gel model. The combination of injectability and tailorable properties of this fibro-gel offers a promising approach in biomedical fields such as therapeutic delivery, medical dressings, and 3D tissue scaffolds for tissue engineering. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.