Department of Chemistry , University of British Columbia , Vancouver , BC V6T 1Z1 , Canada.
School of Physics , Nanjing University , Nanjing 210093 , P. R. China.
Biomacromolecules. 2019 Nov 11;20(11):4199-4207. doi: 10.1021/acs.biomac.9b01114. Epub 2019 Oct 8.
Hydrogels with dynamic mechanical properties are of special interest in the field of tissue engineering and drug delivery. However, it remains challenging to tailor the dynamic mechanical response of hydrogels to simultaneously meet diverse application needs. Here, we report a hetero-coiled-coil complex cross-linked protein hydrogel exhibiting unusual multiple energy dissipation modes and tunable dynamic response. Such unique features confer on the hydrogel responsiveness to mechanical stimuli in a broad range of frequencies. Therefore, the hydrogels are injectable due to their shearing-thinning properties at low shear rates of 0.8 rad s and can fully recover their mechanical properties within a few seconds due to the intrinsic fast dynamics of the cross-linkers. Moreover, the dynamic response of these hydrogels can be fine-tuned by the temperature and the hydrogel network structures. We anticipate that these hydrogels are promising candidates for delivering therapeutic drugs, biological molecules, and cells in a broad spectrum of biomedical applications.
具有动态力学性能的水凝胶在组织工程和药物输送领域具有特殊的意义。然而，要调整水凝胶的动态力学响应以同时满足不同的应用需求仍然具有挑战性。在这里，我们报告了一种杂合螺旋-螺旋复合交联蛋白水凝胶，其具有不寻常的多种能量耗散模式和可调的动态响应。这种独特的特性使水凝胶能够在很宽的频率范围内对机械刺激做出响应。因此，由于其在低剪切速率 0.8 rad s 下的剪切变稀特性，水凝胶是可注射的，并且由于交联剂的固有快速动力学，水凝胶可以在几秒钟内完全恢复其机械性能。此外，水凝胶的动态响应可以通过温度和水凝胶网络结构进行微调。我们预计这些水凝胶将是在广泛的生物医学应用中输送治疗药物、生物分子和细胞的有前途的候选物。
