Biomaterial-Mediated Factor Delivery for Spinal Cord Injury Treatment
Filippo Pinelli,
Fabio Pizzetti,
Valeria Veneruso,
Emilia Petillo,
Michael Raghunath,
Giuseppe Perale,
Pietro Veglianese,
Filippo Rossi
Affiliations
Filippo Pinelli
Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering “Giulio Natta”, Politecnico di Milano, Via Mancinelli 7, 20131 Milan, Italy
Fabio Pizzetti
Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering “Giulio Natta”, Politecnico di Milano, Via Mancinelli 7, 20131 Milan, Italy
Valeria Veneruso
Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri IRCCS, Via Mario Negri 2, 20156 Milan, Italy
Emilia Petillo
Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering “Giulio Natta”, Politecnico di Milano, Via Mancinelli 7, 20131 Milan, Italy
Michael Raghunath
Center for Cell Biology and Tissue Engineering, Institute for Chemistry and Biotechnology (ICBT), Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), 8820 Wädenswil, Switzerland
Giuseppe Perale
Faculty of Biomedical Sciences, University of Southern Switzerland (USI), Via Buffi 13, 6900 Lugano, Switzerland
Pietro Veglianese
Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri IRCCS, Via Mario Negri 2, 20156 Milan, Italy
Filippo Rossi
Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering “Giulio Natta”, Politecnico di Milano, Via Mancinelli 7, 20131 Milan, Italy
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. At this stage, numerous events exacerbate the pathological condition, and therein lies the main cause of post-traumatic neural degeneration, which then ends with the chronic phase. In recent years, therapeutic interventions addressing different neurodegenerative mechanisms have been proposed, but have met with limited success when translated into clinical settings. The underlying reasons for this are that the pathogenesis of SCI is a continued multifactorial disease, and the treatment of only one factor is not sufficient to curb neural degeneration and resulting paralysis. 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.
