biomaterials, trauma

Pressure ulcer (PU) is a worldwide problem that is difficult to address because of the related inflammatory response, local hypoxia, and repeated ischaemia/reperfusion, causing great suffering and financial burden to patients. Traditional Chinese medicine turtle plate powder can treat skin trauma, but its composition is complex and inconvenient to use. Here, we combined cholesterol myristate (S8) with berberine (BBR), with anti-inflammatory and antibacterial effects, as a drug and used hydroxypropyl methylcellulose and polyvinylpyrrolidone K30 as carriers to construct a novel film-forming polymeric solution (S8 + BBR FFPS), comprehensively study its reparative effect on PU and explore the potential mechanism in rat PU models...

Intrauterine adhesions (IUA) are the most common cause of uterine infertility, and conventional treatments have not consistently achieved satisfactory pregnancy rates. Stem cell therapy shows promising potential for the clinical treatment of IUA. Although various advanced biomaterials have been designed for delivering stem cells to the uterine cavity, there remain significant challenges, particularly in devising therapeutic strategies for clinical application that minimize surgical incisions and conform to the intricate structure of uterine cavity...

Skeletal muscle injuries including volumetric muscle loss (VML) lead to excessive tissue scarring and permanent functional disability. Despite high prevalence, there is currently no effective treatment for VML. Bioengineering interventions such as biomaterials that fill the VML defect to support cell and tissue growth are a promising therapeutic strategy. However, traditional biomaterials developed for this purpose lack the pore features needed to support cell infiltration. The present study investigates for the first time, the impact of granular hydrogels on muscle repair - hypothesizing that their flowability will permit conformable filling of the defect site and their inherent porosity will support the invasion of native myogenic cells, leading to effective muscle repair...

Repair of large bone defects caused by severe trauma, non-union fractures, or tumor resection remains challenging because of limited regenerative ability. Typically, these defects heal through mixed routines, including intramembranous ossification (IMO) and endochondral ossification (ECO), with ECO considered more efficient. Current strategies to promote large bone healing via ECO are unstable and require high-dose growth factors or complex cell therapy that cause side effects and raise expense while providing only limited benefit...

Inflammatory diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, periodontitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and celiac disease, disrupt the delicate balance between bone resorption and formation, leading to inflammatory bone loss. Conventional approaches to tackle this issue encompass pharmaceutical interventions and surgical procedures. Nevertheless, pharmaceutical interventions exhibit limited efficacy, while surgical treatments impose trauma and significant financial burden upon patients. Biomaterials show outstanding spatiotemporal controllability, possess a remarkable specific surface area, and demonstrate exceptional reactivity...

The reconstruction of the whole orbitozygomatic framework (OZF) is complex and can be encountered in cases of congenital midface deformity, after tumor ablative surgery and in severe facial trauma. Nowadays, surgeon has a wide range of available techniques that have continually grown over the past years, optimizing the surgical management and the aesthetical outcomes. Among them, the autologous bone graft (ABG) remains one of the most suitable options : ABG is easy to harvest and has optimal biological properties for bone healing...

Knee meniscus is the cushioning fibro-cartilage tissue present in between the femoral condyles and tibial plateau of knee joint. It is largely avascular in nature and suffers from a wide range of tears and injuries caused by accidents, trauma, active lifestyle of the populace and old age of individuals. Healing of meniscus is especially difficult due to their avascularity and hence requires invasive arthroscopic approaches such as surgical resection, suturing or implantation. Though various tissue engineering approaches are proposed for treatment of meniscus tears, 3D printing/bioprinting, injectable hydrogels and physical stimulation involving modalities are gaining forefront in the past decade...

Hemostatic devices are critical for managing emergent severe bleeding. With the increased use of anticoagulant therapy, there is a need for next-generation hemostats. We rationalized that a hemostat with an architecture designed to increase contact with blood, and engineered from a material that activates a distinct and undrugged coagulation pathway can address the emerging need. Inspired by lung alveolar architecture, here, we describe the engineering of a next-generation single-phase chitosan hemostat with a tortuous spherical microporous design that enables rapid blood absorption and concentrated platelets and fibrin microthrombi in localized regions, a phenomenon less observed with other classical hemostats without structural optimization...

In women, a healthy and functional vagina is important for the maintenance of a good quality of life. Various factors, including congenital anomalies, cancer, trauma, infections, inflammation, or iatrogenic injuries, can lead to damage or loss of the vaginal structure, necessitating repair or replacement. Often, such reconstruction procedures involve the use of nonvaginal tissue substitutes, like segments of the large intestine or skin, which are less than ideal both anatomically and functionally. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop new methods of vaginal reconstruction...

Blood vessels are the tubes through which blood flows and are divided into three types: millimeter-scale arteries, veins, and capillaries as well as micrometer-scale capillaries. Arteries and veins are the conduits that carry blood, while capillaries are where blood exchanges substances with tissues. Blood vessels are mainly composed of collagen fibers, elastic fibers, glycosaminoglycans and other macromolecular substances. There are about 19 feet of blood vessels per square inch of skin in the human body, which shows how important blood vessels are to the human body...

Large bone reconstruction following trauma poses significant challenges for reconstructive surgeons, leading to a healthcare burden for health systems, long-term pain for patients, and complex disorders such as infections that are difficult to resolve. The use of bone substitutes is suboptimal for substantial bone loss, as they induce localized atrophy and are generally weak, and unable to support load. A combination of strong polycaprolactone (PCL)-based scaffolds, with an average channel size of 330 µm, enriched with 20% w / w of hydroxyapatite (HA), β-tricalcium phosphate (TCP), or Bioglass 45S5 (Bioglass), has been developed and tested for bone regeneration in a critical-size ovine femoral condyle defect model...

Due to the limited capacity of mammals to regenerate complex tissues, researchers have worked to understand the mechanisms of tissue regeneration in organisms that maintain that capacity. One example is the MRL/MpJ mouse strain with unique regenerative capacity in ear pinnae that is absent from other strains, such as the common C57BL/6 strain. The MRL/MpJ mouse has also been associated with an autoimmune phenotype even in the absence of the mutant Fas gene described in its parent strain MRL/lpr. Due to these findings, the differences between the responses of MRL/MpJ versus C57BL/6 strain are evaluated in volumetric muscle injury and subsequent material implantation...

Peripheral nerve injuries, arising from a diverse range of etiologies such as trauma and underlying medical conditions, pose substantial challenges in both clinical management and subsequent restoration of functional capacity. Addressing these challenges, nanoparticles have emerged as a promising therapeutic modality poised to augment the process of peripheral nerve regeneration. However, a comprehensive elucidation of the complicated mechanistic foundations responsible for the favorable effects of nanoparticle-based therapy on nerve regeneration remains imperative...

Implantable bioelectrodes for regulating and monitoring biological behaviors have become indispensable medical devices in modern healthcare, alleviating pathological symptoms such as epilepsy and arrhythmia, and assisting in reversing conditions such as deafness and blindness. In recent years, developments in the fields of materials science and biomedical engineering have contributed to advances in research on implantable bioelectrodes. However, the foreign body reaction (FBR) is still a major constraint for the long-term application of electrodes...

Bone defects or bone discontinuities caused by trauma, infection, tumours and other diseases have led to an increasing demand for bone grafts and biomaterials. Autologous bone grafts, bone grafts with vascular tips, anastomosed vascular bone grafts and autologous bone marrow components are all commonly used in clinical practice, while oversized bone defects require the use of bone tissue engineering-related biomaterials to repair bone defects and promote bone regeneration. Currently, inorganic components such as polysaccharides and bioceramics, as well as a variety of bioactive proteins, metal ions and stem cells can be loaded into hydrogels or 3D printed scaffold materials to achieve better therapeutic results...

Skin regeneration is the process that restores damaged tissues. When the body experiences trauma or surgical incisions, the skin and tissues on the wound surface become damaged. The body repairs this damage through complex physiological processes to restore the original structural and functional states of the affected tissues. Chitosan, a degradable natural bioactive polysaccharide, has attracted widespread attention partly owing to its excellent biocompatibility and antimicrobial properties; additionally, a modified form of this compound has been shown to promote skin regeneration...

The number of patients with bone defects caused by trauma, bone tumors, and osteoporosis has increased considerably. The repair of irregular, recurring, and large bone defects poses a great challenge to clinicians. Bone tissue engineering is emerging as an appropriate strategy to replace autologous bone grafting in the repair of critically sized bone defects. However, the suitability of bone tissue engineering scaffolds in terms of structure, mechanics, degradation, and the microenvironment is inadequate. Three-dimensional (3D) printing is an advanced additive-manufacturing technology widely used for bone repair...

Full-thickness cutaneous trauma, due to the lack of dermis, leads to difficulty in epithelialization by keratinocytes, developing a fibrotic scar, with less elasticity than the original skin, which may have disorders in predisposed individuals, resulting in hypertrophic scar and keloids. Biomedical materials have excellent characteristics, such as good biocompatibility and low immunogenicity, which can temporarily replace traditional materials used as primary dressings. In this work, we developed two dermal matrices based on Nile tilapia collagen, with (M_GAG) and without (M) glycosaminoglycans, using a sugarcane polymer membrane as a matrix support...

Hemorrhage remains a critical challenge in various medical settings, necessitating the development of advanced hemostatic materials. Hemostatic hydrogels have emerged as promising solutions to address uncontrolled bleeding due to their unique properties, including biocompatibility, tunable physical characteristics, and exceptional hemostatic capabilities. In this review, a comprehensive overview of the preparation and biomedical applications of hemostatic hydrogels is provided. Particularly, hemostatic hydrogels with various materials and forms are introduced...

Traumas, fractures, and diseases can severely influence bone tissue. Insight into bone mineralization is essential for the development of therapies and new strategies to enhance bone regeneration. 3D cell culture systems, in particular cellular spheroids, have gained a lot of interest as they can recapitulate crucial aspects of the in vivo tissue microenvironment, such as the extensive cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix (ECM) interactions found in tissue. The potential of combining spheroids and various classes of biomaterials opens also new opportunities for research within bone tissue engineering...