Abstract
In spinal degenerative disease, an injectable liquid hydrogel can fill in defect entirely, lessen the danger of implant relocation and following loss of disc height, minimizing the operative trauma. Here, we propose an injectable in-situ chemically cross-linked hydrogel by a two-component reaction of liquid silk fibroin with liquid polyurethane at physiological temperature conditions. Confined compression tests and fatigue tests were reported to assess physical properties of the hydrogel. Impact of different diameter on the biomechanical behaviours was tested to evaluate the clinical potentiality of the hydrogel for replacing nucleus pulposus. Degradation behaviours in different solutions and animal experiments were also investigated to examine the tissue biocompatibility of the hydrogel. The hydrogel modulus was affected by the hydrogel geometrical (diameter) parameters. SF/PU composite hydrogel can survive a million cycles, unconstrained fatigue resistance. More importantly, in vivo biocompatibility using New Zealand white rabbits, showed good biocompatibility over a three-month period in culture. Particularly, they showed the significant clinical merit of providing stronger axial compressive stiffness on confined compression test. Based on the outcomes of the present research, the SF/PU composite hydrogel may provide significant advantages for use in future clinical application in replacing nucleus pulposus field.
Highlights
Disc degenerative disease (DDD) can affect the older adults and brings about badly physical disability[1,2,3]
Injectable hydrogel treatment is a novel less invasive therapy for DDD, and the hydrogel plays an important role in minimally invasive treatment
We propose a method for preparing the injectable in situ cross-linkable hydrogel, SF/PU, as a candidate material for nucleus pulposus replacement
Summary
Disc degenerative disease (DDD) can affect the older adults and brings about badly physical disability[1,2,3]. Nucleus replacement strategies have more than theoretically began an original therapy technique for DDD10 This strategy has a slighter invading operating therapy and conserves the left disc substances (i.e., natural annulus fibrosus and endplates). Maybe the nearly satisfying nucleus implant is the PDN-Solo[11,12,13,14,15,16] device, manufactured by RayMedica. This nucleus has a hydrogel core and a woven polyethylene shell. The injectable hydrogel to be used for nucleus pulposus replacement has attracted considerable attention, which can fill the degraded region entirely, lessen the danger of implant relocation and following loss of disc height, minimizing the operative defect. Our prior work has only focused on its unconfined compressive and rheological behavior and cell proliferation assay in vitro
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