Yield-Stress and Creep Control Depot Formation and Persistence of Injectable Hydrogels Following Subcutaneous Administration

Hydrogels that can be injected into the body using standard needles or catheters enable a minimally invasive strategy to prolong local delivery of therapeutic drug and cellular cargo. In particular, physically crosslinked hydrogels exhibit shear-thinning and self-healing behaviors enabling facile injectability and depot formation upon administration. While prior efforts to characterize these systems have focused on injectability and cargo release behaviors, prediction of cargo release in the body often assumes the materials form a depot rather than spreading out upon administration. Here, we evaluate how hydrogel rheology correlates with depot formation and persistence following subcutaneous administration in mice with two physicochemically-distinct, physically crosslinked hydrogel systems. We evaluate calcium-alginate and polymer-nanoparticle hydrogel systems exhibiting variable mechanical behaviors across several rheological properties (stiffness, viscoelasticity, yield stress, and creep). By relating measured rheological properties to depot formation and persistence time following subcutaneous administration, we identify that yield stress is predictive of initial depot formation while creep is predictive of depot persistence. Indeed, only materials with yield stresses greater than 25 Pa form robust depots and reduced creep correlates with longer depot persistence. These findings provide predictive insights into design considerations for hydrogel technologies capable of extended controlled release of therapeutic cargo.