GelMA-MXene Hydrogel Nerve Conduits With Microgrooves For Spinal Cord Injury Repair

Spinal cord injury is a serious disease of central nervous system,which is difficult to be completely repaired after injury.According to the degree of damage,it can be divided into complete transverse damage and half transverse damage.The injury may result in permanent loss or reduction of sensory and motor function below the injury site,contributing to many complications,such as bladder diseases,urinary tract infections and so on.Spinal cord injury patients often suffer from pain,which also affects the quality of life and work.Recent years,biological scaffolds loaded with NSCs have been considered as one of the most effective materials for spinal cord injury repair.A large number of studies have proved that NSCs can differentiate into neurons,oligodendrocytes and other neural lineage cells,helping to reconnect damaged axons with newborn neurons,thus repairing spinal cord injury.Scaffolds provide a good extracellular matrix for NSCs to grow,but there are still many difficulties in regulating the physical factors of scaffolds to regulate the proliferation and differentiation of NSCs and promote the connection between damaged axons and newborn neurons.That is to say,how to further improve the directional property of scaffold materials is still one of the important problems for spinal cord injury repair.The repair of spinal cord injury depends on improving the microenvironment and promoting the connection between injured axons and regenerated neurons.Cell transplantation as part of therapy presents difficulties in directionally differentiating and the attachment to the host spindle process.As a result,researchers are focusing more on using biophysical cues to regulate cell fate.In this study,we made GelMA-MXene hydrogel nerve conduit with electrical conductivity and microgroove structure on the inner surface,and explored its role in spinal cord injury repair.In vitro immunofluorescence staining experiments showed that it could effectively promote the adhesion,proliferation and directed differentiation of NSCs.On the other hand,GelMA-MXene hydrogel nerve conduitseeding with NSCs(GMN)was planted into a 2 mm cavity immediately after injury.GMN have been proven to be effective in repairing spinal cord injury after implantation in rats with complete spinal cord transection injury.After 8 weeks,the positive area of new nerve in GMN group showed significant difference than that of other groups.Therefore,GelMA-MXene hydrogel nerve conduit with microgroove structure is a promising strategy for the treatment of central nervous system diseases.