Injectable hydrogels can provide a scaffold for in situ tissue regrowth and regeneration, yet gel degradation before tissue reformation limits the gels’ ability to provide physical support. Here, we show that this shortcoming can be circumvented through an injectable, interconnected microporous gel scaffold assembled from annealed microgel building blocks whose chemical and physical properties can be tailored by microfluidic fabrication. In vitro, cells incorporated during scaffold formation proliferated and formed extensive three-dimensional networks within 48 h. In vivo, the scaffolds facilitated cell migration that resulted in rapid cutaneous-tissue regeneration and tissue-structure formation within five days. The combination of microporosity and injectability of these annealed gel scaffolds should enable novel routes to tissue regeneration and formation in vivo.
Microfluidic generation of microsphere hydrogel building blocks for the creation of microporous annealed particle (MAP) scaffolds.
High-precision fabrication of microgel building blocks allows the creation of defined MAP scaffolds.
20 pages of Supplemental material
SOURCE- Nature Materials
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