Pectin-based self-healing hydrogel with NaHCO3 degradability for drug loading and release

Abstract

Self-healing hydrogels which have magical self-healing properties have attracted much attention in recent years. Here, we prepared a self-healing hydrogel with biocompatibility and NaHCO3 degradability. The hydrogel is constructed from cross-linking of poly(N,N-dimethyl acrylamide-stat-4-formylphenyl acrylate) P(DMA-stat-FPA) by pectin achlydrazide (pectin-AH). This hydrogel has base labile phenolic bonds connection and acylhydrazone bonds, which made the hydrogel degradable in extremely mild base of NaHCO3 solution and showed self-healing property. At the same time, the pectin endowed the hydrogels with good biocompatibility and biodegradabilty. In addition, hydrogel has micro-porous structure and showed controlled drug release behavior. These excellent properties made this hydrogel very useful in biomedical fields such as tissue engineering, drug carriers and biosensors.