Iranian, Chinese Researchers Develop Method to Measure Rate of Collagen Degradation
In a research conducted by Professor Hossein Baharvand from Royan Research Institute in Iran and a group of Chinese researchers, three types of collagen with high, medium and low cross-linking were labeled with quantum methods and injected subcutaneously, intramuscularly and intracartilaginously into the animal body in vitro; and then, their degradation rate was assessed with advanced imaging method (NIR-II).
The results of this research, published in the international journal Regenerative Biomaterials, showed that all types of collagen tested were completely decomposed in the injection sites within 35 days; however, the average rate of degradation in subcutaneous and muscle tissue was slower than cartilage. More precisely, the results of this research showed that in muscle tissue, the speed of collagen degradation with high cross-linking was slower than the speed of collagen degradation with low cross-linking; while collagen with many transverse connections had the highest degradation rate in shoulder and knee joints.
The results of this research indicated that the imaging method (NIR-II) can accurately show the rate of collagen degradation in the body.
Collagen is a biomaterial compatible with the human body, which is widely used in biomedical applications such as lumbar disc repair, bone defects, tendon damage, and targeted drug delivery.
As an external implant, the ability to destroy the external material and the speed of this destruction are very important in the clinical application of biomaterials. In ideal conditions, the rate of degradation of biomaterial is the same as the rate of tissue repair. In the production of biological products based on collagen, the key point is the speed of collagen degradation in different parts of the body.
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