A Novel Hydrogel-Based System As A Flexible Tool For Spinal Cord Injury Repair Strategies

摘要

Spinal Cord Injuries (SCIs) are unluckily well known for being a relevant cause of severe physical impairments resulting in stable neurological symptoms, worsening of life quality, high patient managing costs and being life-long lasting. Last two decades saw researches and trials aiming at rewiring SCIs, being mainly based on delivery of drugs, tropic factors or cell therapies. Combined approaches using all these elements appear to be the most promising. In this widely heterogeneous literature, a common aspect is the use of carriers to allow local efficient delivery and hydrogels are the most commonly used materials. Nevertheless, solutions proposed are often optimized either for cell carrying or for drug or factor delivery, but none for altogether. Moreover, despite their efficacy, hydrogel condensation recipes are often very complex and not feasible for certified scale-up to accomplish quality assurance in order to become human-applicable products.