Sánchez-Cid Pablo, Jiménez-Rosado Mercedes, Perez-Puyana Victor, Guerrero Antonio, Romero Alberto
Department of Chemical Engineering, Facultad de Química, 41012 Sevilla, Spain.
Department of Chemical Engineering, Escuela Politécnica Superior, 41011 Sevilla, Spain.
Polymers (Basel). 2021 Feb 20;13(4):632. doi: 10.3390/polym13040632.
In recent years, tissue engineering research has led to the development of this field by designing scaffolds with better properties that can fulfill its purpose of better and faster tissue regeneration, consequently improving people's quality of life. Scaffolds are matrices, predominantly composed of polymeric materials, whose main function is to offer support for cell adhesion and subsequent growth, leading to the regeneration of the damaged tissue. The widely used biopolymer in tissue engineering is collagen, which is the most abundant protein in animals. Its use is due to its structure, biocompatibility, ease of modification, and processability. In this work, collagen-based scaffolds were developed with different concentrations and processing techniques, by obtaining hydrogels and aerogels that were characterized with an emphasis on their morphology and mechanical properties. Moreover, fructose was added in some cases as a chemical crosslinking agent to study its influence on the scaffolds' properties. The obtained results revealed that the scaffolds with higher collagen concentrations were more rigid and deformable. Comparing both systems, the aerogels were more rigid, although the hydrogels were more deformable and had higher pore size homogeneity. Fructose addition produced a slight increase in the critical strain, together with an increase in the elastic modulus.
近年来，组织工程研究通过设计具有更好性能的支架推动了该领域的发展，这些支架能够实现更好、更快的组织再生目的，从而提高人们的生活质量。支架是基质，主要由聚合材料组成，其主要功能是为细胞黏附及后续生长提供支撑，进而实现受损组织的再生。组织工程中广泛使用的生物聚合物是胶原蛋白，它是动物体内最丰富的蛋白质。其得以应用是因其结构、生物相容性、易于改性及可加工性。在这项工作中，通过制备水凝胶和气凝胶，并重点对其形态和力学性能进行表征，开发了不同浓度和加工工艺的基于胶原蛋白的支架。此外，在某些情况下添加果糖作为化学交联剂，以研究其对支架性能的影响。所得结果表明，胶原蛋白浓度较高的支架更坚硬且更易变形。比较这两种体系，气凝胶更坚硬，尽管水凝胶更易变形且孔径均匀性更高。添加果糖使临界应变略有增加，同时弹性模量也有所增加。
