Ho Emily, Lowman Anthony, Marcolongo Michele
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA.
Biomacromolecules. 2006 Nov;7(11):3223-8. doi: 10.1021/bm0602536.
Injectable polymers are attractive materials for the fixation or augmentation of soft tissues. Thermosensitive hydrogels, especially poly(N-isopropylacryamide), have been investigated for these applications to exploit the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) which falls between room and body temperatures. One limitation to the material is the ability to withstand loading. In this work, we evaluated an injectable material system, poly(N-isopropylacryamide)-co-poly(ethyleneglycol) dimethacrylate, with the addition of trimethacryloxypropyltrimethoxysilane (MPS). Our goal was to investigate the potential to tune the mechanical behavior of the injectable hydrogel. Addition of MPS to the hydrogel increased the compressive modulus but did not affect the LCST of the hydrogel. An increase in ion concentration of the immersion media resulted in less solution uptake by the hydrogels, regardless of MPS presence in the system. The challenge of this material system is to balance the network-forming and modulus-enhancing MPS while maintaining an injectable hydrogel for potential soft tissue repair.
可注射聚合物是用于软组织固定或增强的有吸引力的材料。热敏水凝胶，尤其是聚（N-异丙基丙烯酰胺），已针对这些应用进行了研究，以利用介于室温和体温之间的最低临界溶液温度（LCST）。该材料的一个局限性是承受负荷的能力。在这项工作中，我们评估了一种可注射材料体系，即聚（N-异丙基丙烯酰胺）-共聚（乙二醇）二甲基丙烯酸酯，并添加了三甲基丙烯酰氧基丙基三甲氧基硅烷（MPS）。我们的目标是研究调节可注射水凝胶力学行为的潜力。向水凝胶中添加MPS可提高压缩模量，但不影响水凝胶的LCST。无论体系中是否存在MPS，浸泡介质离子浓度的增加都会导致水凝胶吸收的溶液减少。这种材料体系面临的挑战是在保持可注射水凝胶以用于潜在软组织修复的同时，平衡形成网络和增强模量的MPS。
