Sánchez-Cid Pablo, Jiménez-Rosado Mercedes, Alonso-González María, Romero Alberto, Perez-Puyana Victor
Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Chemistry, Universidad de Sevilla, 41012 Sevilla, Spain.
Department of Chemical Engineering, Higher Polytechnic School, Universidad de Sevilla, 41012 Sevilla, Spain.
Polymers (Basel). 2021 Jun 30;13(13):2189. doi: 10.3390/polym13132189.
The regeneration of soft tissues that connect, support or surround other tissues is of great interest. In this sense, hydrogels have great potential as scaffolds for their regeneration. Among the different raw materials, chitosan stands out for being highly biocompatible, which, together with its biodegradability and structure, makes it a great alternative for the manufacture of hydrogels. Therefore, the aim of this work was to develop and characterize chitosan hydrogels. To this end, the most important parameters of their processing, i.e., agitation time, pH, gelation temperature and concentration of the biopolymer used were rheologically evaluated. The results show that the agitation time does not have a significant influence on hydrogels, whereas a change in pH (from 3.2 to 7) is a key factor for their formation. Furthermore, a low gelation temperature (4 °C) favors the formation of the hydrogel, showing better mechanical properties. Finally, there is a percentage of biopolymer saturation, from which the properties of the hydrogels are not further improved (1.5 wt.%). This work addresses the development of hydrogels with high thermal resistance, which allows their use as scaffolds without damaging their mechanical properties.
连接、支撑或环绕其他组织的软组织再生备受关注。从这个意义上讲，水凝胶作为其再生的支架具有巨大潜力。在不同的原材料中，壳聚糖因其高度的生物相容性而脱颖而出，再加上其生物可降解性和结构，使其成为制造水凝胶的理想选择。因此，这项工作的目的是开发和表征壳聚糖水凝胶。为此，对流变学评估了其加工过程中最重要的参数，即搅拌时间、pH值、凝胶化温度和所用生物聚合物的浓度。结果表明，搅拌时间对水凝胶没有显著影响，而pH值的变化（从3.2到7）是其形成的关键因素。此外，较低的凝胶化温度（4℃）有利于水凝胶的形成，表现出更好的机械性能。最后，存在一个生物聚合物饱和度百分比，超过该百分比水凝胶的性能就不会进一步改善（1.5 wt.%）。这项工作致力于开发具有高耐热性的水凝胶，使其能够用作支架而不损害其机械性能。
