Engineered From Yogurt, This Gel Helps Heal the Body From Within

Imagine healing damaged tissue with a material made from yogurt.

That’s the future Columbia University engineers are working toward with a new injectable hydrogel that uses extracellular vesicles (EVs) sourced from dairy products to stimulate tissue repair. The new material mimics living tissue and enhances the body’s natural healing processes, opening a path to safer, more accessible regenerative treatments.

Milk Vesicles as Nature’s Nanocarriers

Extracellular vesicles are tiny particles released by cells that shuttle biological messages, including proteins and genetic material, between cells. They’re increasingly being explored for drug delivery and regenerative therapies, but sourcing them in useful quantities has long been a challenge.

“This project started as a basic question about how to build EV-based hydrogels,” said Santiago Correa, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering and lead author of the new study published today in Matter. “Yogurt EVs gave us a practical tool for that, but they turned out to be more than a model.”

Correa and graduate student Artemis Margaronis discovered that milk-derived EVs don’t just carry biological messages—they also help construct the gel’s physical structure. The EVs crosslink with polymers, making the gel injectable and bioactive without needing synthetic additives.

A Gel That Mimics and Heals Living Tissue

By turning a dairy byproduct into both a scaffold and a therapeutic agent, the team created a hydrogel that engages directly with surrounding tissue. In mice, the material stimulated the growth of new blood vessels within a week—a key indicator of successful tissue regeneration. Importantly, the gel also triggered an immune environment rich in anti-inflammatory cell types, which may help explain its therapeutic effects.

• The gel is fully injectable and locally deliverable
• Yogurt-derived EVs act as both structure and bioactive signal
• In mice, the gel promoted angiogenesis and tissue repair without side effects
• The immune response was skewed toward anti-inflammatory cells

Beyond Yogurt: A Modular Platform

The researchers didn’t stop with yogurt. They also tested EVs from mammalian and bacterial cells, demonstrating the platform’s modularity. That flexibility could make it easier to tailor gels for specific clinical needs, from wound healing to organ regeneration.

Margaronis, a National Science Foundation graduate fellow, noted, “Being able to design a material that closely mimics the body’s natural environment while also speeding up the healing process opens a new world of possibilities for regenerative medicine.”

Global Collaboration, Local Impact

The research brought together expertise from Columbia University and the University of Padova in Italy. Padova scientists, including Elisa Cimetta and graduate student Caterina Piunti, contributed agricultural EV sourcing knowledge that complemented the Columbia team’s bioengineering approach. Columbia Engineering’s Kam Leong also co-led the project, and the team is now investigating how the immune modulation observed in mice might guide future tissue repair strategies.

Early results suggest that dairy-based EVs are more than just a convenient model system—they may represent a viable, low-cost source for real-world regenerative medicine.

“Moments like these remind me why the research field in biomedical engineering is always on the cusp of something exciting,” said Margaronis.

Journal Reference

Journal: Matter
Article Title: Extracellular Vesicles as Dynamic Crosslinkers for Bioactive Injectable Hydrogels
Conflict of Interest: Columbia University has filed a patent application for technology based on this work