Injectable Porous Hydrogel for Soft Tissue Regeneration

Introduction Injectable hydrogels are potent biomaterials for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Their use enables non-invasive or minimally invasive surgery, and they can be shaped to correspond to target sites. In addition, hydrogels allow for homogeneous cell distribution and high permeability. To maximize the effectiveness of hydrogels, porous structure is often required to facilitate enhanced mass transfer of metabolites, thus leading to improved cell proliferation and tissue formation in vivo [1]. Based on our hypothesis that thermo-responsive gelatin can be used for pore generation in hydrogels [2], we investigated whether tissue formation could be enhanced by the use of human fibroblasts and gelatin microbead-embedded fibrin gels.