Regenerated Antheraea pernyi Silk Fibroin/Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) Thermosensitive Composite Hydrogel with Improved Mechanical Strength.

Boxiang Wang,Yifan Wang,Bo Si,Song Zhang,Li Liu,Dehong Cheng,Yanhua Lu

doi:10.3390/polym11020302

Boxiang Wang, Yifan Wang + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/polym11020302

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Journal: Polymers	Publication Date: Feb 11, 2019
Citations: 16	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Shanghai University, Eastern Liaoning University

Abstract

At present, Antheraea pernyi silk fibroin (ASF) has attracted research efforts to investigate it as a raw material for fabrication of biomedical devices because of its superior cytocompatibility. Nevertheless, native ASF is not easily processed into a hydrogel without any crosslinking agent, and a single hydrogel shows poor mechanical properties. In this paper, a series of ASF/poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAAm) composite hydrogels with different ASF contents were manufactured by a simple in situ polymerization method without any crosslinking agent. Meanwhile, the structures, morphologies and thermal properties of composite hydrogels were investigated by XRD, FTIR, SEM, DSC and TGA, respectively. The results indicate that the secondary structure of silk in the composite hydrogel can be controlled by changing the ASF content and the thermal stability of composite hydrogels is enhanced with an increase in crystalline structure. The composite hydrogels showed similar lower critical solution temperatures (LCST) at about 32 °C, which matched well with the LCST of PNIPAAm. Finally, the obtained thermosensitive composite hydrogels exhibited enhanced mechanical properties, which can be tuned by varying the content of ASF. This strategy to prepare an ASF-based responsive composite hydrogel with enhanced mechanical properties represents a valuable route for developing the fields of ASF, and, furthermore, their attractive applications can meet the needs of different biomaterial fields.

Highlights

Hydrogels have been investigated as suitable materials for tissue engineering, cell culture, drug carriers, and artificial cartilage because of their high water content and tissue-like elastic properties.They can mimic the natural extracellular matrix in terms of bioactivity [1]
The results indicated that the networks between Antheraea pernyi silk fibroin (ASF) and PNIPAAm are chemically identical
The ASF/PNIPAAm composite hydrogels were prepared by mixing ASF and NIPAAm with a simple in situ polymerization method

Summary

Introduction

Hydrogels have been investigated as suitable materials for tissue engineering, cell culture, drug carriers, and artificial cartilage because of their high water content and tissue-like elastic properties. They can mimic the natural extracellular matrix in terms of bioactivity [1]. Their unique degradation, flexible mechanical properties and tunable compositions provide the opportunity to achieve various biological functions that are beneficial for cell engineering. Natural structural proteins display critical structural and bioactive properties, including long-range ordered molecular secondary structures and high primary amino acid sequences that have the broader application of functional protein-based composite biomaterials [3]. There is still the challenge of how to control the mechanical properties of SF-based biomaterials, especially silk fibroin hydrogels

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