The study demonstrates the feasibility of integrating the Boys Lab’s thin-film recording arrays with bone-regenerating cryogel scaffolds developed in Hixon’s lab. The scaffold consists of a degradable chitosan- and gelatin-based cryogel designed to provide an interconnected macroporous architecture that supports cell infiltration and tissue integration.

“We know my lab’s scaffold works to regrow bone, and we saw comparable bone formation between a cryogel-only scaffold and one with the integrated neural device,” Hixon says. “We also checked for any immune response over a period of about two weeks and saw none.”