Basu Tithi, Goswami Debasish, Majumdar Saptarshi
Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad 502285, Telangana, India.
iScience. 2024 Oct 22;27(11):111227. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.111227. eCollection 2024 Nov 15.
Physical/chemical crosslinking and surface-modifications of hydrogels have been extensively endorsed to enhance their biomaterial functionalities. The latter approaches involve using toxic crosslinkers or chemical modifications of the biopolymers, limiting the clinical translation of hydrogels beyond short-term promising results. The current study aims to tailor the polymer's structure to obtain customized applications using the same FDA-approved ingredients. PEGs of different molecular weights have been used to tune the van der Waal's forces, NaCl has been used to alter the electrostatic interactions of the charged polymers, and glycerol has been used to tweak the H-bonding. Same crosslinker-free sodium alginate/gelatin hydrogel formulation unfolds multiple properties: controlled-release, self-healing, mesh size, storage modulus, degradation rate. The hydrogels, lacking in one aspect, displayed superior performance in another. This study, including experiments and molecular simulations, illustrates that developing new materials may not always be necessary, as the same polymeric matrix can generate immense variations in different aspects.
水凝胶的物理/化学交联及表面改性已被广泛认可，以增强其生物材料功能。后一种方法涉及使用有毒交联剂或对生物聚合物进行化学改性，这限制了水凝胶在短期有前景的结果之外的临床转化。当前研究旨在利用相同的FDA批准成分来调整聚合物结构，以获得定制应用。不同分子量的聚乙二醇已被用于调节范德华力，氯化钠已被用于改变带电聚合物的静电相互作用，甘油已被用于调整氢键。相同的无交联剂海藻酸钠/明胶水凝胶配方展现出多种特性：控释、自愈、网孔尺寸、储能模量、降解速率。在某一方面有所欠缺的水凝胶，在另一方面表现出卓越性能。这项包括实验和分子模拟的研究表明，开发新材料可能并非总是必要的，因为相同的聚合物基质可以在不同方面产生巨大差异。
