Porous EH and EH-PEG scaffolds as gene delivery vehicles to skeletal muscle.

Purpose: Synthetic biomaterials are widely used in an attempt to control the cellular behavior of regenerative tissues. This can be done by altering the chemical and physical properties of the polymeric scaffold to guide tissue repair. This paper addresses the use of a polymeric scaffold (EH network) made from the cyclic acetal monomer, 5-ethyl-5-(hydroxymethyl)-β,β-dimethyl-1,3-dioxane-2-ethanol diacrylate (EHD), as a release device for a therapeutic plasmid encoding for an insulin-like growth factor-1 green fluorescent protein fusion protein (IGF-1 GFP).

Methods: Scaffolds were designed to have different porous architectures, and the impact of these architectures on plasmid release was determined. We hypothesized that IGF-1 could be delivered more effectively using a porous scaffold to allow for the release of IGF-1.

Results: We showed that by altering the number of pores exposed to the surface of the network, faster plasmid loading and release were achieved. In addition, the IGF-1 GFP plasmids were found to be effective in producing IGF-1 and GFP within human skeletal muscle myoblast cell cultures.

Conclusions: This work aims to show the utility of EH biomaterials for plasmid delivery for potentially localized skeletal muscle regeneration.