Bio-Inspired Porous Microneedles Dwelled Stem Cells for Diabetic Wound Treatment

Abstract

Diabetic wound healing is a serious, complex, and chronic process; one current promising and focusing technology in this area is stem cell treatment. Here, novel porous microneedle (MN) arrays is fabricated, which can highly mimetic stem cell niches, through template filling, and particle etching method. The human adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) are encapsulated in Matrigel then loaded into the porous MN arrays by post-perfusion. Because of the extracellular matrix-mimicking, the biocompatible Matrigel offers a bionic microenvironment of stem cell nest suitable for growth. Benefiting from the numerous pore structures of MNs, the loaded ADSCs have enough space to fully absorb nutrients, proliferate greatly and exhibit prompted function. In addition, the cell-loaded MN arrays have enough mechanical strength to penetrate the skin, allowing the ADSCs to get into the deep wound areas. Based on these features, the performance of the resultant MN arrays in promoting tissue regeneration is demonstrated, collagen deposition and angiogenesis in diabetes wounds of rat models. Thus, it is believe that the bioinspired porous MNs can act as excellent stem cell scaffolds and will find many practical values in clinic wound healing.