Rapidly in situ forming an injectable Chitosan/PEG hydrogel for intervertebral disc repair

Lin Huang; Wantao Wang; Yiwen Xian; Lei Liu; Jinghao Fan; Hongmei Liu; Zhaomin Zheng; Decheng Wu

doi:10.1016/j.mtbio.2023.100752

Rapidly in situ forming an injectable Chitosan/PEG hydrogel for intervertebral disc repair

Mater Today Bio. 2023 Jul 28:22:100752. doi: 10.1016/j.mtbio.2023.100752. eCollection 2023 Oct.

Authors

Lin Huang¹, Wantao Wang^{1

2}, Yiwen Xian¹, Lei Liu¹, Jinghao Fan¹, Hongmei Liu¹, Zhaomin Zheng², Decheng Wu¹

Affiliations

¹ Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Biomaterials, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, China.
² Department of Spine Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China.

Abstract

Intervertebral disc (IVD) degeneration occurred with the increasing age or accidents has puzzled peoples in daily life. To seal IVD defect by injectable hydrogels is a promising method for slowing down IVD degeneration. Herein, we reported a rapidly in situ forming injectable chitosan/PEG hydrogel (CSMA-PEGDA-L) through integrating photo-crosslink of methacrylate chitosan (CSMA) with Schiff base reaction between CSMA and aldehyde polyethylene glycol (PEGDA). The CSMA-PEGDA-L possessed a stronger compressive strength than the photo-crosslinked CSMA-L hydrogel and Schiff-base-crosslinked CSMA-PEGDA hydrogel. This chitosan/PEG hydrogel showed low cytotoxicity from incubation experiments of nucleus pulpous cells. When implanted on the punctured IVD of rat's tail, the CSMA-PEGDA-L hydrogel could well retard the progression of IVD degeneration through physical plugging, powerfully proven by radiological and histological evaluations. This work demonstrated the strategy of in situ injectable glue may be a potential solution for prevention of IVD degeneration.

Keywords: Chitosan; Injectable hydrogel; Intervertebral disc repair; PEG; Tissue engineering.