Department of Dental Materials and Biomaterials Research, RWTH Aachen University Hospital, Pauwelsstrasse 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany.
Electron Microscopy Facility, Institute of Pathology, RWTH Aachen University Hospital, Pauwelsstrasse 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany.
Biomater Sci. 2022 Sep 27;10(19):5552-5565. doi: 10.1039/d2bm00214k.
Fibrin-gelatin hydrogel blends exhibit high potential for tissue engineering applications. However, the means to tailor these blends in order to control their properties, thus opening up a broad range of new target applications, have been insufficiently explored. We hypothesized that a controlled heat treatment of gelatin prior to blend synthesis enables control of hydrolytic swelling and shrinking, stiffness, and microstructural architecture of fibrin-gelatin based hydrogel blends while providing tremendous long-term stability. We investigated these hydrogel blends' compressive strength, degradation stability, and microstructure in order to test this hypothesis. In addition, we examined the gel's ability to support endothelial cell proliferation and stretching of encapsulated smooth muscle cells. This research showed that a controlled heat pretreatment of the gelatin component strongly influenced the stiffness, swelling, shrinking, and microstructural architecture of the final blends regardless of identical gelatin mass fractions. All blends offered high long-term hydrolytic stability. In conclusion, the results of this study open the possibility to use this technique in order to tune low-concentrated, open-porous fibrin-based hydrogels, even in long-term tissue engineering experiments.
纤维蛋白-明胶水凝胶混合物在组织工程应用中具有很高的潜力。然而，为了控制这些混合物的性质，从而开辟更广泛的新目标应用，人们对其进行调整的方法还没有得到充分的探索。我们假设，在混合前对明胶进行受控的热处理可以控制水解溶胀和收缩、硬度以及纤维蛋白-明胶基水凝胶混合物的微观结构，同时提供极大的长期稳定性。我们研究了这些水凝胶混合物的压缩强度、降解稳定性和微观结构，以验证这一假设。此外，我们还研究了凝胶支持内皮细胞增殖和包裹平滑肌细胞拉伸的能力。这项研究表明，无论明胶质量分数相同，明胶成分的受控热预处理都会强烈影响最终混合物的硬度、溶胀、收缩和微观结构。所有混合物都提供了高的长期水解稳定性。总之，这项研究的结果为使用该技术来调整低浓度、多孔的纤维蛋白基水凝胶开辟了可能性，即使在长期的组织工程实验中也是如此。
