Regenerative biomaterial patches for failing hearts

再生医学已被确立为修复和恢复组织功能的强大方法，并促进了医疗程序和医疗保健技术新时代的发展。然而，这些技术中的许多技术由于治疗递送方法不佳而未能到达临床，该方法不能有效地靶向用于修复的组织。为了改善临床结果，已经开发了生物材料，目的是以持续和局部的方式控制药物和细胞递送。然而，目前正在研究的生物材料不能粘附到靶组织上，并且依赖于缝线将它们保持在适当位置，这会引起进一步的组织损伤和炎症。此外，诸如跳动的心脏的机械要求高的环境要求生物材料是坚固的并且能够符合组织的动态性质。例如，心肌梗塞可导致10亿个心肌细胞死亡，并且向梗塞心脏递送细胞是治愈患病心脏组织的新兴疗法。然而，由于缺乏先进的细胞递送方法，这些治疗的疗效受到限制。本研究的总体目标是通过使用粘附性生物材料作为药物递送载体来改善与再生治疗相关的临床结果。将被开发用于递送药物的特定生物材料是水凝胶，其是高水含量的溶胀凝胶。水凝胶是封装细胞和药物的一类非常理想的材料，因为它们可以合成以模拟天然组织，这增加了这些系统的生物相容性。该研究开发的水凝胶具有高度可拉伸性，因此可以部署在物理要求苛刻的环境中，并且具有组织粘合剂，可以使封装的药物与组织表面紧密接触并更有效地递送。这项研究的结果将为再生医学开辟新的机会，因为这些水凝胶可以显着提高基于细胞和药物的治疗的效率，改善我们的治疗方法和对病变组织的理解，并将创新的粘合剂生物材料作为再生医疗器械引入临床。

Regenerative medicine has been established as a powerful approach to repair and restore tissue function and has facilitated the development of a new era of medical procedures and healthcare technologies. However, many of these technologies have failed to reach the clinic due to poor methods of therapeutic delivery which fails to effectively target the tissues intended for repair.To improve clinical outcomes, biomaterials have been developed with the aim to control drug and cell delivery in sustained and localised manner. However, biomaterials currently under investigation are not able to adhere to target tissues and rely on sutures to hold them in place which induces further tissue damage and inflammation. Furthermore, a mechanical demanding environment such as beating heart requires the biomaterial to be robust and able to conform to the dynamic nature of the tissue. For example, myocardial infarction can lead to the death of 1 billion cardiomyoctes and cell-delivery to infarcted hearts is an emerging therapy to heal the diseased cardiac tissue. However, the efficacy of these treatments has been limited due to the lack of advanced cell-delivery methods.The overall goal of this research is to improve clinical outcomes associated with regenerative therapies by using adhesive biomaterials as drug delivery vehicles. The specific biomaterials that will be developed to deliver drugs are hydrogels which are high-water content swollen gels. Hydrogels are a highly desirable class of materials to encapsulate cells and drugs as they can be synthesised to mimic natural tissues which increases the biocompatibility of these systems. The hydrogels developed in this research are highly stretchable, so they can be deployed in physical demanding environments, and tissue adhesive which allows the encapsulated drugs to closely interface with the tissue surface and be delivered more efficiently.The outcomes of this research would open up new opportunities for regenerative medicine as these hydrogels could significantly increase the efficiency of cell and drug-based therapies, improve our treatment methods and understanding of diseased tissues and introduce innovative adhesive biomaterials to the clinic as regenerative medical devices.