Highly Stretchable Piezoelectric Elastomer for Accelerated Repairing of Skeletal Muscles Loss

Skeletal muscle loss is a common clinical disease, whose long treatment period and expensive treatment costs bring a heavy burden to patients. Currently, the use of piezoelectric materials to generate in situ and efficient electrical stimulation has been proven to significantly promote wound healing and other defects. However, skeletal muscle requires repaired materials with high elastic deformation to accompany its reciprocating movement during the healing process. Therefore, developing biocompatible materials that combine high piezoelectricity and stretchability is a great challenge. In the present work, a piezoelectric elastomer PPBE is prepared by copolymerization of bio-based diacid and diol. PPBE has matching elastic modulus with the skeletal muscle to accompanied proceed stretching and recovery movements. Piezoelectrical charge from PPBE scaffold under ultrasound and mechanical stimuli could promote myogenic differentiation via Ca²⁺ signaling pathway and modulate cell functions, resulting in improved muscle morphology and functional performance of skeletal muscle. Thus, development of the degradable PPBE scaffold would provide new therapy strategy for volumetric muscle loss (VML) and present great potential in repairing of other tissues.