Bottlebrush inspired injectable hydrogel for rapid prevention of postoperative and recurrent adhesion

Postsurgical adhesion is a common clinic disease induced by surgical trauma,accompanying serious subsequent complications.Current non-surgical approaches of drugs treatment and biomaterial barrier administration only show limited prevention effects and couldn’t effectively promote peritoneum repair.Herein,inspired by bottlebrush,a novel self-fused,antifouling,and injectable hydrogel is fabricated by the free-radical polymerization in aqueous solution between the methacrylate hyaluronic acid(HA-GMA)and N-(2-hydroxypropyl)methacrylamide(HPMA)monomer without any chemical crosslinkers,termed as H-HPMA hydrogel.The H-HPMA hydrogel can be tuned to perform excellent self-fused properties and suitable abdominal metabolism time.Intriguingly,the introduction of the ultra-hydrophilic HPMA chains to the H-HPMA hydrogel affords an unprecedented antifouling capability.The HPMA chains establish a dense hydrated layer that rapidly prevents the postsurgical adhesions and recurrent adhesions after adhesiolysis in vivo.The H-HPMA hydrogel can repair the peritoneal wound of the rat model within 5 days.Furthermore,an underlying mechanism study reveals that the H-HPMA hydrogel significantly regulated the mesothelial-to-mesenchymal transition(MMT)process dominated by the TGF-β-Smad2/3 signal pathway.Thus,we developed a simple,effective,and available approach to rapidly promote peritoneum regeneration and prevent peritoneal adhesion and adhesion recurrence after adhesiolysis,offering novel design ideas for developing biomaterials to prevent peritoneal adhesion.