Laboratory of Soft and Wet Matter, Faculty of Advanced Life Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan.
Department of Cancer Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-8638, Japan.
Biomacromolecules. 2020 Oct 12;21(10):4220-4230. doi: 10.1021/acs.biomac.0c01003. Epub 2020 Sep 27.
Chitin is a biopolymer, which has been proven to be a biomedical material candidate, yet the weak mechanical properties seriously limit their potentials. In this work, a chitin-based double-network (DN) hydrogel has been designed as a potential superficial repairing material. The hydrogel was synthesized through a double-network (DN) strategy composing hybrid regenerated chitin nanofiber (RCN)-poly (ethylene glycol diglycidyl ether) (PEGDE) as the first network and polyacrylamide (PAAm) as the second network. The hybrid RCN-PEGDE/PAAm DN hydrogel was strong and tough, possessing Young's modulus (elasticity) 0.097 ± 0.020 MPa, fracture stress σ 0.449 ± 0.025 MPa, and work of fracture 5.75 ± 0.35 MJ·m. The obtained DN hydrogel was strong enough for surgical requirements in the usage of soft tissue scaffolds. In addition, chitin endowed the DN hydrogel with good bacterial resistance and accelerated fibroblast proliferation, which increased the NIH3T3 cell number by nearly five times within 3 days. Subcutaneous implantation studies showed that the DN hydrogel did not induce inflammation after 4 weeks, suggesting a good biosafety in vivo. These results indicated that the hybrid RCN-PEGDE/PAAm DN hydrogel had great prospect as a rapid soft-tissue-repairing material.
壳聚糖是一种生物聚合物，已被证明是一种有前途的生物医学材料候选物，但机械性能较弱严重限制了其应用潜力。在这项工作中，设计了一种基于壳聚糖的双网络（DN）水凝胶作为潜在的表面修复材料。该水凝胶是通过双网络（DN）策略合成的，该策略由混合再生壳聚糖纳米纤维（RCN）-聚乙二醇二缩水甘油醚（PEGDE）作为第一网络和聚丙烯酰胺（PAAm）作为第二网络组成。混合 RCN-PEGDE/PAAm DN 水凝胶具有高强度和韧性，杨氏模量（弹性）为 0.097 ± 0.020 MPa，断裂应力 σ 为 0.449 ± 0.025 MPa，断裂功 为 5.75 ± 0.35 MJ·m。所获得的 DN 水凝胶足够强，可以满足软组织支架使用中的手术要求。此外，壳聚糖赋予 DN 水凝胶良好的抗菌性和促进成纤维细胞增殖的能力，在 3 天内使 NIH3T3 细胞数量增加近 5 倍。皮下植入研究表明，DN 水凝胶在 4 周后不会引起炎症，表明其在体内具有良好的生物安全性。这些结果表明，混合 RCN-PEGDE/PAAm DN 水凝胶作为一种快速软组织修复材料具有广阔的应用前景。
