Bio-based Hydrogels by Click Chemistry for Cartilage Tissue Engineering

Descripción del proyecto

Hidrogeles de última generación para la reparación del cartílago

A medida que la población europea envejece, el número de personas que sufren lesiones de cartílago sigue creciendo, superando el millón de casos anuales. Los tratamientos eficaces siguen siendo limitados, ya que los hidrogeles sintéticos suelen tener problemas de biocompatibilidad, mientras que los naturales pueden carecer de resistencia o integrarse mal en los tejidos del huésped. La contaminación bacteriana supone otro reto, por lo que la búsqueda de mejores materiales es crucial. Con el apoyo de las acciones Marie Skłodowska-Curie, el proyecto ClickBioGel aborda esa necesidad desarrollando hidrogeles de base biológica a partir de colágeno, ácido hialurónico y kappa-carragenano, aprovechando sus beneficios combinados. Mediante la química de clic, el proyecto garantiza una reticulación selectiva y de alto rendimiento en condiciones suaves. Al ofrecer hidrogeles fotocruzados, impresos en tres dimensiones e inyectables con propiedades mecánicas, bioadhesivas y antibacterianas mejoradas, el equipo de ClickBioGel está impulsando soluciones para la regeneración del cartílago.

Objetivo

Cartilage injury afflicts over a million patients annually in Europe and it is a serious problem due to Europe's ageing population. Hydrogels are promising materials for cartilage tissue regeneration in case they are designed accordingly. The use of synthetic materials suffer from biocompatibility and toxicity problems while natural materials can have drawbacks such as low mechanical strength, limited types, insufficient integration with host tissues and easy contamination with bacteria due to high biocompatibility. ClickBioGel aims to fill this gap through fabrication of bio-based hydrogels for cartilage tissue regeneration using a ternary material system composed of collagen, hyaluronic acid and K-carrageenan to advantage from their synergetic effects, and the “Click” chemistry concept, particularly thiol-ene and Diels-Alder reactions, for the selective and high yield chemical crosslinking of the hydrogels under mild reaction conditions. Chitin nanofibrils will be dispersed in the hydrogel precursor for enhancing the mechanical properties as well as antibacterial and bioadhesive characteristics while RGD peptide will be attached on the hydrogels for cell-adhesiveness. The production of the hydrogels will mainly be in three categories as photocrosslinked hydrogels, 3-D printed hydrogels and light-free injectable hydrogels, which will allow the tunability according to the needs. In vitro cell viability, cytotoxicity and chondrogenesis performance of the hydrogels will be evaluated. With the support of my supervisor (Prof Sangermano), his infrastructure at Department of Applied Science and Technology, as well as the interdepartmental biomedical research centre and the multidisciplinary additive manufacturing research centre at Politecnico di Torino, the fellowship will train me on hydrogel synthesis, photocuring, 3D-printing and biological analysis and act as a pilot for my own ERC starting grant to be an independent researcher.