Injectable human decellularized adipose tissue hydrogel containing stem cells enhances wound healing in mouse

Abstract

Acellular matrix hydrogels have been extracted from a variety of tissues currently, which have been widely exploited for various applications. What is more, hydrogels derived from porcine myocardium matrix have entered clinical trials (NCT02305602) for the prevention and treatment of heart failure post-myocardial infarction. However, few scholars have analyzed the adipose acellular matrix hydrogels. Here we report an injectable hydrogel entirely from human decellularized adipose tissue (hDAT-gel) and explore the innovative application in wound healing combining with human adipose-derived stem cells (hASCs). We postulated that hDAT-gel could provide hASCs with a 3D vivo-like ecological niche necessary to enhance stem cell engraftment, survival as well as differentiation to improve the quality of wound healing. Consequently, a temperature-responsive hDAT-gel was successfully produced, which could undergo sol-gel transition at 37℃. In vitro, hASCs could survive and proliferate well in the self-assembled gel which retained important protein components. In vivo, when the hASCs-embedded hDAT-gels were injected into the full-thickness cutaneous wound of mice, the wound healed rapidly through obvious neovascularization especially within 7 days. Our study demonstrated that the hDAT-gel containing hASCs could accelerate the vascularization of the wound site and speed up the wound healing to some extent. It is a promising injectable biomaterial for stem cell delivery and wound repair.