Melville Laboratory for Polymer Synthesis, Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge, CB2 1EW, UK.
Department of Paediatrics, Addenbrooke's Hospital, University of Cambridge, Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 0QQ, UK.
Adv Healthc Mater. 2019 May;8(10):e1900068. doi: 10.1002/adhm.201900068. Epub 2019 Apr 3.
Synthetic hydrogels are an important class of materials in tissue engineering, drug delivery, and other biomedical fields. Their mechanical and electrical properties can be tuned to match those of biological tissues. In this work, hydrogels that exhibit both mechanical and electrical biomimicry are reported. The presented dual networks consist of supramolecular networks formed from 2:1 homoternary complexes of imidazolium-based guest molecules in cucubit[8]uril and covalent networks of oligoethylene glycol-(di)methacrylate. The viscoelastic properties of human brain tissues are also investigated. The mechanical properties of the dual network gels are benchmarked against the human tissue, and it is found that they both are neuro-mimetic and exhibit cytocompatibility in a neural stem cell model.
合成水凝胶是组织工程、药物输送和其他生物医学领域中一类重要的材料。它们的机械和电学性能可以被调整以匹配生物组织的特性。在这项工作中，报告了具有机械和电学仿生特性的水凝胶。所提出的双重网络由超分子网络组成，该超分子网络由基于咪唑鎓的客体分子在杯[8]芳烃中的 2:1 同三体配合物形成，以及由低聚乙二醇-(二)甲基丙烯酸酯的共价网络组成。还研究了人脑组织的粘弹性性质。双重网络凝胶的机械性能与人体组织进行了基准测试，结果发现它们均具有神经仿生特性，并在神经干细胞模型中表现出细胞相容性。
