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Description:

Volumetric muscle loss (VML) is a traumatic or surgical injury to the skeletal muscles that causes irrecoverable functional loss leading to chronic deficits and long-term disability. Although cell transplantation is a potent therapeutic approach, treating VML remains challenging because of the poor graft survival of cell suspensions injected into defects. Here, we report the development of tunable micropore-forming injectable hydrogels to deliver mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) for VML treatment. The molecular modification of gelatin with hydrogen-bonding functional groups induces liquid-liquid phase separation when mixed with chemically crosslinkable gelatin to form injectable hydrogels with tunable microporous structures. MSCs encapsulated in porous hydrogels show higher cell adhesion, spreading, proliferation, and secretion of paracrine signals than those encapsulated in non-porous hydrogels. Porous hydrogels enhance cell infiltration and myoblast differentiation Additionally, porous hydrogels improve the graft survival of transplanted MSCs in VML mouse models and ameliorate therapeutic efficiency. This controlled microstructure-containing injectable hydrogel may serve as a cell-delivering scaffold to improve the efficacy of cell transplantation therapies in regenerative medicine.

Rights:

• Creative Commons BY-NC-ND Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International
  

Keyword: Regenerative medicine, Hydrogel, Liquid-liquid phase separation, Porous material, Mechanobiology

Date published: 2025-06-25

Publisher: Advanced Functional Materials

Journal:

• ADVANCED FUNCTIONAL MATERIALS (ISSN: 16163028)

Funding:

Manuscript type: Publisher's version (Version of record)

MDR DOI:

First published URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202508278

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Updated at: 2025-06-27 17:03:30 +0900

Published on MDR: 2025-06-27 16:19:09 +0900