Nerve Cells Decide to Orient inside an Injectable Hydrogel with Minimal Structural Guidance.
Jonas C RoseMaría Cámara-TorresKhosrow RahimiJens KöhlerMartin MoellerLaura De LaportePublished in: Nano letters (2017)
Injectable biomaterials provide the advantage of a minimally invasive application but mostly lack the required structural complexity to regenerate aligned tissues. Here, we report a new class of tissue regenerative materials that can be injected and form an anisotropic matrix with controlled dimensions using rod-shaped, magnetoceptive microgel objects. Microgels are doped with small quantities of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (0.0046 vol %), allowing alignment by external magnetic fields in the millitesla order. The microgels are dispersed in a biocompatible gel precursor and after injection and orientation are fixed inside the matrix hydrogel. Regardless of the low volume concentration of the microgels below 3%, at which the geometrical constrain for orientation is still minimum, the generated macroscopic unidirectional orientation is strongly sensed by the cells resulting in parallel nerve extension. This finding opens a new, minimal invasive route for therapy after spinal cord injury.
Keyphrases
- tissue engineering
- iron oxide nanoparticles
- induced apoptosis
- hyaluronic acid
- minimally invasive
- cell cycle arrest
- drug delivery
- stem cells
- cell death
- gene expression
- wound healing
- mesenchymal stem cells
- oxidative stress
- endoplasmic reticulum stress
- signaling pathway
- molecularly imprinted
- pi k akt
- simultaneous determination
- visible light