Abstract
Recently, catechol-containing polymers have been extensively developed as promising materials for surgical tissue adhesives, wound dressing, drug delivery depots, and tissue engineering scaffolds. Catechol conjugation to the polymer backbone provides adhesive properties to the tissue and does not significantly affect the intrinsic properties of the polymers. An example of a catecholic polymer is catechol-conjugated hyaluronic acid. In general, hyaluronic acid shows excellent biocompatibility and biodegradability; thus, it is used in various medical applications. However, hyaluronic acid alone has poor mechanical and tissue adhesion properties. Catechol modification considerably increases the mechanical and underwater adhesive properties of hyaluronic acid, while maintaining its biocompatibility and biodegradability and enabling its use in several biomedical applications. In this review, we briefly describe the synthesis and characteristics of catechol-modified hyaluronic acid, with a specific focus on catechol-involving reactions. Finally, we discuss the basic concepts and therapeutic effects of catechol-conjugated hyaluronic acid for biomedical applications.
Highlights
Hyaluronic acid (HA) is a naturally occurring polysaccharide composed of D-glucuronic acid and N-acetyl-D-glucosamine, which is used in various biomedical applications, such as wound healing, viscosupplementation for wrinkle fillers, post-surgical antiadhesive barriers, drug delivery carriers, and tissue engineering scaffolds [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]
HA–catechol/PLL hydrogels enzymatically crosslinked with horseradish peroxidase (HRP) with H2 O2 showed a significant improvement in adhesive strength, from 20.8 kPa to 33.8 kPa [39]
CAP nanoparticles stabilized by HA–catechol have been designed to enhance the transfection of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) in a gene delivery system, as shown in Figure 6 [41]
Summary
Hyaluronic acid (HA) is a naturally occurring polysaccharide composed of D-glucuronic acid and N-acetyl-D-glucosamine, which is used in various biomedical applications, such as wound healing, viscosupplementation for wrinkle fillers, post-surgical antiadhesive barriers, drug delivery carriers, and tissue engineering scaffolds [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. Carbodiimide chemistry is commonly used to prepare HA–catechol [37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81] It involves the formation of an amide bond between the carboxylic group of HA and the primary amine of dopamine (Figure 1a).
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
