Biomaterial-Mediated Factor Delivery for Spinal Cord Injury Treatment

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is an injurious process that begins with immediate physical damage to the spinal cord and associated tissues during an acute traumatic event. However, the tissue damage expands in both intensity and volume in the subsequent subacute phase. Recent advances have led to the development of biomaterials aiming to promote in situ combinatorial strategies using drugs/biomolecules to achieve a maximized multitarget approach. This review provides an overview of single and combinatorial regenerative-factor-based treatments as well as potential delivery options to treat SCIs. The pathogenic cascade of subacute SCI is largely localized in the spinal cord, and it follows that all of the abovementioned major therapeutic strategies to curb the pathogenic cascade in subacute SCI rely on localized, precise delivery of drugs and factors.

• 1
  SCI's physiopathology is an extremely disabling disease that heavily affects the life of the patients and is the result of a primary injury that is then followed by a secondary one, commonly known as the main cause of post-traumatic neural degeneration.
• 2
  Combinatorial treatments represent a new challenge in SCI treatment; thus, the possibility to have simultaneous releases from the same device can be a key point in synergizing the efficacy of multitarget treatments against a multifactorial diseases such as SCI.
• 3
  To overcome these critical issues, researchers are looking toward the use of biomaterial-based delivery tools (e.g., HGs and NPs) to optimize SCI treatments, able to carry a large variety of therapeutic agents and release them locally.