Abstract
Microfluidic generation of hydrogel microbeads is a highly efficient and reproducible approach to create various functional hydrogel beads. Here, we report a method to prepare crosslinked amino-functionalized polyethylene glycol (PEG) microbeads using a microfluidic channel. The microbeads generated from a microfluidic device were evaluated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and confocal laser scanning microscopy, respectively. We found that the microbeads were monodisperse and the amino groups were localized on the shell region of the microbeads. A swelling test exhibited compatibility with various solvents. A cell binding assay was successfully performed with RGD peptide-coupled amino-functionalized hydrogel microbeads. This strategy will enable the large production of the various functional microbeads, which can be used for solid phase peptide synthesis and on-bead bioassays.
Highlights
The solid-phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) method performed on solid supports offers a robust technology to produce chemically engineered peptide libraries [1,2,3]
Since a solution of poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether acrylate (PEGA) and poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA) coexisted with TEMED, the radical initiation preceded at the core region
Amino-functionalized hydrogel microbeads were prepared in a microfluidic channel
Summary
The solid-phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) method performed on solid supports offers a robust technology to produce chemically engineered peptide libraries [1,2,3]. Since Merrifield first demonstrated peptide synthesis by means of the SPPS method using crosslinked polystyrene supports in 1963, amino-functionalized polystyrene-based microbeads as polymer supports of the SPPS method are still widely used for peptide synthesis [4,5]. Because the polystyrene-based microbeads are not allowed to be utilized in aqueous solution due to their hydrophobicity, researchers improved hydrophilicity by grafting polyethylene glycol (PEG) into the polystyrene backbones [6,7]. Even though the amphiphilic microbeads have been developed so far, ideal solid supports are being explored. These microbeads are usually prepared by suspension polymerization, their large polydispersity index (PDI) hampers the preparation of monodisperse microbeads, even after sieving [8,9,10,11,12]
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