The ongoing interest in densely packed miniaturized electrode arrays for high-resolution epicortical recordings has induced many researchers to explore the use of nanomaterial coatings to reduce electrode impedance while increasing signal-to-noise ratio and charge injection capability. Although these materials are very effective, their use in clinical practice is strongly inhibited by concerns ...

Current strategies to improve wound healing are often created from multiple components that may include a scaffold, cells, and bioactive cues. Acellular natural hydrogels are an attractive approach since the material's intrinsic biological activity can be paired with mechanical properties similar to soft tissue to induce a host's response toward healing. In this report, a systematic evaluation ...

This paper describes a general procedure for the formation of hydrogels that contain microfluidic networks. In this procedure, micromolded meshes of gelatin served as sacrificial materials. Encapsulation of gelatin meshes in a hydrogel and subsequent melting and flushing of the gelatin left behind interconnected channels in the hydrogel. The channels were as narrow as approximately 6 microm, an...

The effective and sustained delivery of DNA and siRNAs locally would increase the applicability of gene therapy in tissue regeneration and cancer therapy. One promising approach is to use hydrogel scaffolds to encapsulate and deliver nucleotides in the form of nanoparticles to the disease sites. However, this approach is currently limited by the inability to load concentrated and active gene de...

A degradable, cytocompatible bioadhesive can facilitate surgical procedures and minimize patient pain and post-surgical complications. In this study a bioadhesive hydrogel system based on oxidized methacrylated alginate/8-arm poly(ethylene glycol) amine (OMA/PEG) has been developed, and the bioadhesive characteristics of the crosslinked OMA/PEG hydrogels evaluated. Here we demonstrate that the ...

The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) fails to heal after suture repair. One hypothesis for this failure is the premature loss of the fibrin clot, or provisional scaffolding, between the two ligament ends in the joint environment. To test this hypothesis, a substitute provisional scaffold of collagen-platelet rich plasma (PRP) hydrogel was used to fill the ACL wound site at the time of suture re...

We demonstrate the additive manufacturing of complex three-dimensional (3D) biological structures using soft protein and polysaccharide hydrogels that are challenging or impossible to create using traditional fabrication approaches. These structures are built by embedding the printed hydrogel within a secondary hydrogel that serves as a temporary, thermoreversible, and biocompatible support. Th...

Local delivery of DNA through a hydrogel scaffold would increase the applicability of gene therapy in tissue regeneration and cancer therapy. However, the delivery of DNA/cationic polymer nanoparticles (polyplexes) using hydrogels is challenging due to the aggregation and inactivation of polyplexes during their incorporation into hydrogel scaffolds. We developed a novel process (termed caged na...

This study aimed to study the effects of initial cell density and in vitro culture method on the construction of tissue-engineered bone grafts and osteogenic activities. Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) were seeded onto cubic scaffolds prepared from demineralized bone matrix (DBM) by three methods - static, hydrodynamic, or fibrin hydrogel-assisted seeding. The resulting cell-scaffold const...