Repair Strategies and Bioactive Functional Materials for Intervertebral Disc

Abstract

Intervertebral disc (IVD) degeneration is the leading cause of low back pain, which represents a highly prevalent chronic aging-associated disorder with a large socio-economic burden and a great decline in the quality of life, contributing to the pressing need for IVD treatments. Thus, finding effective disease-modifying approaches for postponing the progression of IVD degeneration and repairing degenerated intervertebral discs is of great importance, even facing various challengeable obstacles. Bioactive functional materials exhibit excellent advances in modulating cell activity and remodeling tissue homeostasis, which acts as a promising and accessible therapeutic approach to tissue repair and organ reconstruction. Recently, these have been notably explored to investigate bioactive functional materials-based repair strategies for intervertebral disc recovery and regeneration, including cell-based tissue engineering, the development of implants for disc recovery, and therapeutic methods for remodeling the functional integrity of the IVD. This review summarizes the advanced progress of bioactive functional materials in IVD repair and regeneration, and discusses their regulatory mechanisms, limitations, challenges as well as their clinical translational prospects in the future.

A Redox Homeostasis Modulatory Hydrogel with GLRX3+ Extracellular Vesicles Attenuates Disc Degeneration by Suppressing Nucleus Pulposus Cell Senescence

“…An ideal hydrogel for the biological repair of the elastic, load-bearing intervertebral disc should have mechanical properties similar to those of the native disc, with appropriate buffering capacity and flexibility. , We thus tested the self-healing properties and mechanical performances of the GDC@EVs-GLRX3 hydrogel. When a piece of hydrogel was cut into two halves, they were able to merge and fuse into one within 20 min at 37 °C.…”

“…As the disc is a load-bearing organ, liquid drug alone is prone to leakage and inferior efficacy . Injectable hydrogels with locally retained EVs and sustained release for on-demand drugs are ideal formulas for intradiscal therapy. , In this study, we proposed a strategy that used an injectable, ROS-responsive, and EVs-GLRX3-loading hydrogel to balance the redox homeostasis in NP cells.…”

Bioinspired Intervertebral Disc with Multidirectional Stiffness Prepared via Multimaterial Additive Manufacturing

“…The biocompatibility experiments in vivo are helpful to eliminate the interference of other factors and can fully reflect the clinical transformation prospect. In the future, we will explore biocompatibility in vivo and tissue repair and regeneration associated with natural IVD [58][59][60] and monitor tissue rehabilitation after discectomy. [61]…”

Core–Shell Structured Nanozyme with PDA-Mediated Enhanced Antioxidant Efficiency to Treat Early Intervertebral Disc Degeneration

“…The pathogenesis of IDD featuring reduced NP cells with decreased extracellular matrix (ECM) synthesis has yet to be revealed clearly, 8 but it has been confirmed that oxidative stress (OS) and chronic inflammation often occur concurrently in the microenvironment of degenerated IVD. 9−11 Cell therapy has recently been applied to treat IDD for enhancing the NP cell number and ECM synthesis but failed to get the desired results, which is ascribed to the low proliferative index of NP cells and the difficulty in directed differentiation of stem cells in such pathological conditions.…”