Controlled liposomes delivery from chitosan-based thermosensitive hydrogel for regenerative medicine

This work describes the development of an injectable nanocomposite system based on achitosan thermosensitive hydrogel combined with liposomes for regenerative medicine applications.Liposomes with good physicochemical properties are prepared and embedded within the chitosannetwork. The resulting nanocomposite hydrogel is able to provide a controlled release of the contentfrom liposomes, which are able to interact with cells and be internalized. The cellular uptake isenhanced by the presence of a chitosan coating, and cells incubated with liposomes embedded withinthermosensitive hydrogels displayed a higher cell uptake compared to cells incubated with liposomesalone. Furthermore, the gelation temperature of the system resulted to be equal to 32.6 C; thus,the system can be easily injected in the target site to form a hydrogel at physiological temperature.Given the peculiar performance of the selected systems, the resulting thermosensitive hydrogels area versatile platform and display potential applications as controlled delivery systems of liposomesfor tissue regeneration.