Novel Rapidly-Gelling Injectable Chitosan Sponge to Promote Oligodendrocyte Progenitor Cells' Differentiation

摘要

We have developed a biomaterial to specifically target remyelination post-SCI. A thorough physicochemical characterization of the sponges demonstrated that they were also excellent candidates for many other tissue regenerative applications. Particularly, the use of GDP as an anionic crosslinker of chitosan which is a cationic polymer, allowed not only for rapid gel formation (t_(gel) ＜ 1.6 sec), which is faster than most injectable gels found in the literature, but also its guanosine group revealed to induce OPC attachment and differentiation. This was in contrast with poor OPC adhesion on uncrosslinked chitosan films. More interestingly, OPC differentiation was demonstrated on the sponge, even though the culture media was supplemented with bFGF and PDGF to keep OPCs from differentiating. Future work will investigate the incorporation of NT-3 into the sponge to promote more OPC differentiation. In addition, the sponges will be injected in-vivo in a rat SCI model to assess functional recovery post-SCI.