Abstract
Gelatin is a costless polypeptide material of natural origin, able to form hydrogels that are potentially useful in biomaterial scaffold design for drug delivery, cell cultures, and tissue engineering. However, gelatin hydrogels are unstable at physiological conditions, losing their features only after a few minutes at 37 °C. Accordingly, treatments to address this issue are of great interest. In the present work, we propose for the first time the use of bi- and trifunctional tetrazoles, most of them unknown to date, for photoinduced gelatin cross-linking towards the production of physiologically stable hydrogels. Indeed, after UV-B irradiation, aryl tetrazoles generate a nitrilimine intermediate that is reactive towards different functionalities, some of them constitutively present in the amino acid side chains of gelatin. The efficacy of the treatment strictly depends on the structure of the cross-linking agent used, and substantial improved stability was observed by switching from bifunctional to trifunctional cross-linkers.
Highlights
Proteins are valuable polymers, serving as biomaterials in applications that revolutionized regenerative medicine, tissue regeneration [1,2], and drug delivery [3] in recent decades
In summary, for the first time, the photoinduced gelatin cross-linking with homobiand trifunctional nitrilimine intermediates was proposed
For the first tetrazoles time, the via photoinduced gelatin cross-linking with homobichemistry has proven to be less effective than expected, which was confirmed by the and trifunctional tetrazoles via nitrilimine intermediates was proposed
Summary
Proteins are valuable polymers, serving as biomaterials in applications that revolutionized regenerative medicine, tissue regeneration [1,2], and drug delivery [3] in recent decades. The main limiting factor to their use is their availability, which impacts costs, and effective substitutes for ECM proteins are highly desirable. In this framework, gelatin is a widespread natural polymer used for the design of innovative biomaterials as an ECM protein substitute [6] and as a drug delivery vehicle [7], already used in well-established applications in the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and food industries [8].
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