Abstract
BackgroundHydrogels that possess hydrophilic and soft characteristics have been widely used in various biomedical applications, such as tissue engineering scaffolds and drug delivery. Conventional hydrogels are not electrically conductive and thus their electrical communication with biological systems is limited.MethodTo create electrically conductive hydrogels, we fabricated composite hydrogels of hyaluronic acid and polypyrrole. In particular, we synthesized and used pyrrole-hyaluronic acid-conjugates and further chemically polymerized polypyrrole with the conjugates for the production of conductive hydrogels that can display suitable mechanical and structural properties.ResultsVarious characterization methods, using a rheometer, a scanning electron microscope, and an electrochemical analyzer, revealed that the PPy/HA hydrogels were soft and conductive with ~ 3 kPa Young’s modulus and ~ 7.3 mS/cm conductivity. Our preliminary in vitro culture studies showed that fibroblasts were well attached and grew on the conductive hydrogels.ConclusionThese new conductive hydrogels will be greatly beneficial in fields of biomaterials in which electrical properties are important such as tissue engineering scaffolds and prosthetic devices.
Highlights
Hydrogels that possess hydrophilic and soft characteristics have been widely used in various biomedical applications, such as tissue engineering scaffolds and drug delivery
These new conductive hydrogels will be greatly beneficial in fields of biomaterials in which electrical properties are important such as tissue engineering scaffolds and prosthetic devices
Hydrogel formation was expected to result from the oxidative coupling of the pyrrole moieties between hyaluronic acid (HA) chains and/or the coupling between the polymerized PPy chains and the conjugated pyrrole moieties presented on HA
Summary
Hydrogels that possess hydrophilic and soft characteristics have been widely used in various biomedical applications, such as tissue engineering scaffolds and drug delivery. Hydrogels are three dimensional insoluble networks of hydrophilic polymer chains and swell in aqueous solutions. They can absorb a lot of water within their matrices. Hydrogels usually exhibit great biocompatibility, porosity, soft mechanical properties and ease in modification. They have been extensively employed for various applications, such as tissue engineering scaffolds, tissue augments, and drug delivery vehicles. Hydrogels have such good characteristics, hydrogels do not generally possess electrical conductivity [1]. Since electrical signals are involved in various biological events, such as tissue regeneration, muscle movement, cell communications, biomaterials that have electrical conductance have been fabricated to modulate cell/tissue
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