Supergel

The new hydrogel will help to restore muscles and vocal cords

Tatiana Matveeva, "Scientific Russia"

Canadian scientists have developed a new biomaterial – strong enough to restore muscle tissue (including the heart) and vocal cords, the press service of McGill University reports. The development is described in detail in the journal Advanced Science (Taheri et al., Injectable, Pore-Forming, Perfusable Double-Network Hydrogels Resilient to Extreme Biomechanical Stimulations).

An example of how an injectable hydrogel is used as an implant to fill in a damaged area of the vocal cords and restore the voice.

A hydrogel is a type of biomaterial that gives cells space to live and grow. Once in the body, the biomaterial forms a stable porous structure that allows living cells to grow or pass through damaged organs.

None of the previous injectable hydrogels had both high porosity and toughness, the authors note. To endow their hydrogel with such properties, scientists added a pore-forming polymer to its composition. 

The scientists tested the strength of their hydrogel in a machine they developed to simulate the extreme biomechanics of human vocal cords. Vibrating at a speed of 120 movements per second for more than six million cycles, the new biomaterial remained intact, while other standard hydrogels crumbled into pieces, unable to cope with the load.

"The results are promising, and we hope that one day the new hydrogel will be used as an implant to restore the voice of people with damaged vocal cords, for example, those who have defeated laryngeal cancer," says Guanyu Bao from McGill University.

Also, the new hydrogel can be used in the future, for example, to deliver drugs or create model tissues for drug screening, scientists say. The team is even trying to apply the technology in creating a model of lung tissue for testing drugs from COVID-19.

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