Researchers from the University of Waterloo have invented a hydrogel that is capable of both healing damaged heart tissue and improving cancer treatments.

The University of Waterloo researchers worked in conjunction with teams from the University of Toronto and Duke University to create a synthetic material composed of cellulose nanocrystals derived from wood pulp. According to its developers, the material is an attempt to mimic the fibrous nanostructures and properties of human tissues, so as to replicate its biomechanical properties.

Confocal fluorescence microscopy images of EKGel. (a,d) Confocal microscopy image of EKGel with rhodamine-B isothiocyanate-labeled gelatin (red color). (b, e) CF-488A labeled aCNCs (green color). The merged image appears yellow where the two channels overlap (c, f). CaCNC = 1.5 wt%, Cgel = 2.0 wt%. Scale bar is 2 µm in (a–c) and 5 µm in (d–e). Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2220755120

"Cancer is a diverse disease, and two patients with the same type of cancer will often respond to the same treatment in very different ways," the researchers explained. "Tumor organoids are essentially a miniaturized version of an individual patient's tumor that can be used for drug testing, which could allow researchers to develop personalized therapies for a specific patient."

In the lab, the researchers designed synthetic biomimetic hydrogels — featuring a nanofibrous architecture complete with large pores for nutrient and waste transport that impact mechanical properties and cell interaction — for biomedical applications.

Specifically, the team developed the human-tissue mimetic hydrogels to encourage the growth of small-scale tumor replicas derived from donated tumor tissue on which the effectiveness of cancer treatments can be weighed before testing them on actual patients. This approach could, according to the researchers, potentially lead to personalized cancer therapies.

Further, the Waterloo team is also developing similar biomimetic hydrogels for use as an injectable for drug delivery and regenerative medical applications, wherein the filamentous hydrogel material is administered to regrow heart tissue damaged by heart attack.

The team aims to eventually use conductive nanoparticles to create electrically conductive nanofibrous gels that can be used to heal both heart and skeletal muscle tissue in the future.

An article detailing the research, “Nanocolloidal hydrogel mimics the structure and nonlinear mechanical properties of biological fibrous networks,” appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.