Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA.
Adv Healthc Mater. 2021 May;10(10):e2100048. doi: 10.1002/adhm.202100048. Epub 2021 Mar 18.
A patient's capacity for tissue regeneration varies based on age, nutritional status, disease state, lifestyle, and gender. Because regeneration cannot be predicted prior to biomaterial implantation, there is a need for responsive biomaterials with adaptive, personalized degradation profiles to improve regenerative outcomes. This study reports a new approach to use therapeutic ultrasound as a means of altering the degradation profile of silk fibroin biomaterials noninvasively postimplantation. By evaluating changes in weight, porosity, surface morphology, compressive modulus, and chemical structure, it is concluded that therapeutic ultrasound can trigger enhanced degradation of silk fibroin scaffolds noninvasively. By removing microbubbles on the scaffold surface, it is found that acoustic cavitation is the mechanism responsible for changing the degradation profile. This method is proved to be safe for human cells with no negative effects on cell viability or metabolism. Sonication through human skin also effectively triggers scaffold degradation, increasing the clinical relevance of these results. These findings suggest that silk is an ultrasound-responsive biomaterial, where the degradation profile can be adjusted noninvasively to improve regenerative outcomes.
患者的组织再生能力会根据年龄、营养状况、疾病状态、生活方式和性别而有所不同。由于在生物材料植入前无法预测再生能力，因此需要具有适应性、个性化降解特性的响应型生物材料，以改善再生效果。本研究报告了一种新方法，即在生物材料植入后，使用治疗性超声非侵入性地改变丝素蛋白生物材料的降解特性。通过评估重量、孔隙率、表面形态、压缩模量和化学结构的变化，可以得出结论，治疗性超声可以非侵入性地触发丝素蛋白支架的增强降解。通过去除支架表面的微泡，发现声空化是改变降解特性的机制。该方法对人类细胞是安全的，对细胞活力或代谢没有负面影响。通过人体皮肤进行的超声处理也能有效地触发支架降解，提高了这些结果的临床相关性。这些发现表明，丝素是一种对超声有响应的生物材料，其降解特性可以通过非侵入性方式进行调整，以改善再生效果。
