Optimization of Crosslinking Parameters for Biosynthetic Poly(vinyl-alcohol)-Tyramine Hydrogels

Abstract

Photo-polymerizable hydrogels have been widely researched as tissue engineering matrices. When designing a new photo-crosslinkable, biosynthetic hydrogel system, a number of parameters need to be optimized, such as the polymerization conditions and amount of biological polymer included. This study aimed to investigate the crosslinking parameters (i.e., choice of initiator, light intensity and irradiation time), as well as the biological polymer (i.e., gelatin) content, for a degradable tyramine functionalized poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA-Tyr) system. This PVA-Tyr can be photocrosslinked using a visible light initiated process composed of ruthenium (Ru) and persulfate compounds. Comparison of ammonium persulfate (APS) and sodium persulfate (SPS) showed that SPS supported fabrication of higher quality gels at lower concentrations than APS. The initiator concentration and irradiation conditions that were found to produce the best quality PVATyr gels were 2 mM Ru/20 mM SPS and 3 minutes of 15 mW/cm2 of visible light. Moreover, incorporation of gelatin into the PVA-Tyr gels successfully facilitated attachment of Schwann cells on the gels. The Schwann cells were able to survive and proliferate over 3 days on the PVA-Tyr/gelatin gels. Overall, this study showed that PVA-Tyr gels have high potential as biomaterials for tissue engineering applications.