Abstract
During the past decades, photo-crosslinked gelatin hydrogel (methacrylated gelatin, GelMA) has gained a lot of attention due to its remarkable application in the biomedical field. It has been widely used in cell transplantation, cell culture and drug delivery, based on its crosslinking to form hydrogels with tunable mechanical properties and excellent bio-compatibility when exposed to light irradiation to mimic the micro-environment of native extracellular matrix (ECM). Because of its unique biofunctionality and mechanical tenability, it has also been widely applied in the repair and regeneration of bone, heart, cornea, epidermal tissue, cartilage, vascular, peripheral nerve, oral mucosa, and skeletal muscle et al. The purpose of this review is to summarize the recent application of GelMA in drug delivery and tissue engineering field. Moreover, this review article will briefly introduce both the development of GelMA and the characterization of GelMA. Finally, we discuss the challenges and future development prospects of GelMA as a tissue engineering material and drug or gene delivery carrier, hoping to contribute to accelerating the development of GelMA in the biomedical field.Graphical abstract
Highlights
Gelatin attracts more and more attention in the biomedical field, owing to its unique characteristics such as biocompatibility, solubility, low immunogenicity, low cytotoxicity, easy acquirement, and so on [1, 2]
We focus on recent studies related to the biomedical application of Gelatin methacrylated (GelMA) hydrogel including its basic characterization and drug delivery, as well as tissue engineering field
There are many advanced technologies that have been used to modify the relevant properties of GelMA so that it can have excellent performance in different biological fields
Summary
Gelatin attracts more and more attention in the biomedical field, owing to its unique characteristics such as biocompatibility, solubility, low immunogenicity, low cytotoxicity, easy acquirement, and so on [1, 2]. Gelatin contains the arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (RGD) peptide sequence and the matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) degradable motifs, the one which is beneficial for cellular growth, and the other controls cell enzymatic degradation [4, 5]. To further improve this materials, Van den Bulcke and coworkers firstly modified gelatin hydrogels with. GelMA can repair defect area without severe inflammatory response (owing to its unique bio-compatibility and mechanical tenability), and can promote the peripheral neurons and vascular regeneration (owing to RGD, MMP degradable motifs and ECM-like micro-environment). We will discuss the challenges and future development prospects of GelMA as a tissue engineering material and drug delivery carrier (Scheme 1)
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