Functional Hydrogel Co-Remolding Migration and Differentiation Microenvironment for Severe Spinal Cord Injury Repair

Spinal cord injury (SCI) activates nestin⁺ neural stem cells (NSCs), which can be regarded as potential seed cells for neuronal regeneration. However, the lesion microenvironment seriously hinders the migration of the nestin⁺ cells to the lesion epicenter and their differentiation into neurons to rebuild neural circuits. In this study, a photosensitive hydrogel scaffold is prepared as drug delivery carrier. Genetically engineered SDF1α and NT3 are designed and the scaffold is binary modified to reshape the lesion microenvironment. The binary modified scaffold can effectively induce the migration and neuronal differentiation of nestin⁺ NSCs in vitro. When implanted into a rat complete SCI model, many of the SCI-activated nestin⁺ cells migrate into the lesion site and give rise to neurons in short-term. Meanwhile, long-term repair results also show that implantation of the binary modified scaffold can effectively promote the maturation, functionalization and synaptic network reconstruction of neurons in the lesion site. In addition, animals treated with binary scaffold also showed better improvement in motor functions. The therapeutic strategy based on remolding the migration and neuronal differentiation lesion microenvironment provides a new insight into SCI repair by targeting activated nestin+ cells, which exhibits excellent clinical transformation prospects.