Injectable Sponge Delivers Drugs, Cells, and Structure
Date: 21.11.2012
Bioengineers at Harvard have developed a gel-based sponge that can be molded to any shape, loaded with drugs or stem cells, compressed to a fraction of its size, and delivered via injection. Once inside the body, it pops back to its original shape and gradually releases its cargo, before safely degrading.
The biocompatible technology, revealed this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, amounts to a prefabricated healing kit for a range of minimally invasive therapeutic applications, including regenerative medicine.
Consisting primarily of alginate, a seaweed-based jelly, the injectable sponge contains networks of large pores, which allow liquids and large molecules to easily flow through it. Mooney and his research team demonstrated that live cells can be attached to the walls of this network and delivered intact along with the sponge, through a small-bore needle. Normally, a scaffold like this would have to be implanted surgically. Gels can also be injected, but until
The resulting "cryogel" fills a gap that has previously been unmet in biomedical engineering.
The next step in the team's research is to perfect the degradation rate of the scaffold so that it breaks down at the same rate at which newly grown tissue replaces it.
