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Researchers have developed a new hydrogel that mimics human tissue to heal heart damage and improve the personalization of cancer treatments. This innovation represents a major contribution to health innovation, promising advances in regenerative medicine and personalized treatments.
Scientists have developed a wood pulp-derived gel to repair damaged heart tissue and improve cancer treatment.
You can mend broken hearts this Valentine’s Day, as researchers have invented a new hydrogel that can be used to heal damaged heart tissue and improve cancer treatment.
Dr. Elizabeth Prince, a chemical engineering researcher at the University of Waterloo, collaborated with researchers at the University of Toronto and Duke University to design a synthetic material made using cellulose nanocrystals derived from wood pulp. The material is designed to mimic the fibrous nanostructure and properties of human tissue, thereby reproducing its unique biomechanical properties.
Advances in personalized cancer treatment
“Cancer is a diverse disease, and two patients with the same type of cancer often have very different responses to the same treatment,” Prince said. “Tumor organoids are essentially miniaturized versions of individual patients’ tumors that can be used for drug testing, potentially allowing researchers to develop personalized treatments for specific patients.”
As director of the Prince Polymer Materials Laboratory, Prince designs synthetic biomimetic hydrogels for biomedical applications. Hydrogels have a nanofibrous structure with large pores for transporting nutrients and waste products, which influences mechanical properties and cell interactions.
Prince, a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo, used these human tissue-mimetic hydrogels to promote the growth of small-scale tumor replicas derived from donated tumor tissue.
She aims to test the effectiveness of cancer treatments on small tumor organoids before administering them to patients, enabling personalized cancer treatments. The study was carried out in collaboration with Professor David Sescon from the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre.
A breakthrough in tissue regeneration
Prince of Waterloo’s research group is developing similar biomimetic hydrogels that can be injected for drug delivery and regenerative medicine applications, as Waterloo researchers continue to lead health innovation in Canada.
Her research aims to use injected filamentous hydrogel materials to regenerate damaged heart tissue after a heart attack. She used nanofibers as a scaffold for regeneration and healing of damaged heart tissue.
“We are building on research that we started during our doctoral studies. When a patient has a heart attack, we can inject therapeutic drugs into the human body to repair the damage caused to the heart. “It’s about designing hydrogels that mimic human tissue,” Prince said.
Prince’s research is unique because most gels currently used in tissue engineering and 3D cell culture do not have this nanofibrous structure. Prince’s group is developing chemistry for nanostructures that precisely mimic human tissue, using nanoparticles and polymers as building blocks for materials.
The next step in Prince’s research is to use conductive nanoparticles to create conductive nanofibrous gels that can be used to heal heart and skeletal muscle tissue.
Reference: “Nanocolloidal hydrogels mimic the structure and nonlinear mechanical properties of biological fibrous networks” Elizabeth Prince, Sofia Morozova, Chen Chengkun, Vahid Adivnia, Ilya Yakavets, Sergey Panyukov, Michael Rubinstein, Eugenia Kumacheva, December 13, 2023, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2220755120
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