Photo-Crosslinkable, Injectable Locust Bean Gum Hydrogel Induce Chondrogenic Differentiation of Stem Cells for Cartilage Regeneration.

Due to the limited therapeutic efficacy of current treatments, articular cartilage regeneration is still a challenging work. Scaffold based tissue engineering provides a promising strategy for cartilage regeneration, but most scaffolds are limited by poor mechanical properties or unfavorable biocompatibility. Here, we reported a novel photo-crosslinkable, injectable locust bean gum (LBG) - methacrylate (MA) hydrogel as a biomimetic extracellular matrix (ECM) for cartilage repair with minimal invasive operation. LBG-MA hydrogels showed controllable degradation rate and improved mechanical properties, and excellent biocompatibility. More importantly, LBG-MA hydrogel significantly induced bone mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) to chondrogenic differentiation in vitro, as evidenced by high accumulation of cartilage-specific ECM components glycosaminoglycan (GAG) and up-regulated expression of key chondrogenic genes (Col2a1, ACAN, and SOX9). Besides, the hydrogel is injectable, which can be in situ cross-linked via UV irradiation. Further, the photo-crosslinkable hydrogels accelerated cartilage healing in vivo after 8 weeks of therapy. The current study provides a strategy for photo-crosslinkable, injectable, biodegradable scaffold fabrication based on native polysaccharide polymer for minimal invasive cartilage repair. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.