Enhancing Stem Cell Therapy for Cartilage Repair in Osteoarthritis—A Hydrogel Focused Approach

Abstract

Sem cells hold tremendous promise for the treatment of cartilage repair in osteoarthritis. In addition to their multipotency, stem cells possess immunomodulatory effects that can alleviate inflammation and enhance cartilage repair. However, the widely clinical application of stem cell therapy to cartilage repair and osteoarthritis has proven difficult due to challenges in large-scale production, viability maintenance in pathological tissue site and limited therapeutic biological activity. This review aims to provide a perspective from hydrogel-focused approach to address few key challenges in stem cell-based therapy for cartilage repair and highlight recent progress in advanced hydrogels, particularly microgels and dynamic hydrogels systems for improving stem cell survival, retention and regulation of stem cell fate. Finally, progress in hydrogel-assisted gene delivery and genome editing approaches for the development of next generation of stem cell therapy for cartilage repair in osteoarthritis are highlighted.

Nanoparticles incorporated hydrogels for delivery of antimicrobial agents: developments and trends

“…NPs incorporated hydrogels for antimicrobial agents' delivery can be divided into various categories based on the types of encapsulated nanoparticles. 45,137,138 The categories include hydrogel incorporated with antibacterial metallic nanoparticles, hydrogel incorporated with antibacterial polymeric nanoparticles, hydrogel incorporated with antimicrobial agents loaded nanoparticles, etc. Among antimicrobial agents/drugs that can be loaded into a hydrogel system include antimicrobial nanoparticles, antibiotics, biological extracts, antimicrobial peptides, etc.…”

Tissue-mimetic hybrid bioadhesives for intervertebral disc repair

“…67,68 Further combined with scaffold, MSCs-hydrogel delivery therapy has been widely studied in cartilage tissue repair. [69][70][71] Notably, the developed tissue-mimetic bioadhesives not only show the stem cell delivery capacity, but the strong local adhesion to the tissue surface also provides improved cell retention, which makes it different from existing hydrogel scaffolds in the demanding environment of the IVD. This novelty can potentially improve IVD tissue engineering efficacy.…”

Advanced Hydrogels With Nanoparticle Inclusion for Cartilage Tissue Engineering

“…The innovative combination of NPs and hydrogels equips a variety of potential properties to hydrogels that were not present in conventional hydrogels, enhancing the cartilage repair capacity ( Eftekhari et al, 2020 ; Keshvardoostchokami et al, 2021 ). Nanocomposite hydrogels with various structures and biological functions can be prepared by using different nanoparticles and cross-linking methods, which can be mainly divided into four categories according to their physical and chemical properties: metal and metal-oxide NPs, inorganic NPs, carbon-based NPs, and polymeric NPs ( Thoniyot et al, 2015 ; Liu et al, 2021 ; Shi et al, 2021 ). The properties conferring to the composites depend on the incorporated nanoparticle types, such as enhancing cross-linking, improving mechanical strength and promoting cell proliferation.…”