Regenerative biomaterial patches for failing hearts

再生医学已被确立为一种修复和恢复组织功能的强大方法，并促进了医疗程序和保健技术的新时代的发展。然而，由于治疗方法不佳，未能有效地靶向修复的组织，许多这些技术都未能进入临床。为了改善临床结果，生物材料被开发出来，目的是以持续和局部的方式控制药物和细胞的传递。然而，目前正在研究的生物材料无法附着到靶组织上，并依赖缝合线将其固定到位，这会导致进一步的组织损伤和炎症。此外，机械要求苛刻的环境，如心脏跳动，要求生物材料坚固耐用，并能够符合组织的动态性质。例如，心肌梗死可导致10亿心肌细胞死亡，而将细胞输送到梗死心脏是治愈患病心脏组织的一种新兴疗法。然而，由于缺乏先进的细胞给药方法，这些治疗的疗效一直是有限的。本研究的总体目标是通过使用粘附性生物材料作为药物输送载体来改善与再生治疗相关的临床结果。将开发的用于输送药物的特定生物材料是水凝胶，这是一种高含水率的膨胀凝胶。水凝胶是一类非常理想的包裹细胞和药物的材料，因为它们可以被合成来模拟自然组织，从而增加了这些系统的生物相容性。这项研究开发的水凝胶具有高度的延展性，因此它们可以部署在物理要求苛刻的环境中，以及组织粘合剂，使包裹的药物与组织表面紧密结合，更有效地传递。本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著提高细胞和药物治疗的效率，改善我们对疾病组织的治疗方法和理解，并将创新的粘附性生物材料作为再生医疗设备引入临床。

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.