The Effects of a Short Self-Assembling Peptide on the Physical and Biological Properties of Biopolymer Hydrogels.

Sumit Chowdhuri,Debapratim Das,Moumita Ghosh,Lihi Adler-Abramovich

doi:10.3390/pharmaceutics13101602

Sumit Chowdhuri, Debapratim Das + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmaceutics13101602

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Abstract

Hydrogel scaffolds have attracted much interest in the last few years for applications in the field of bone and cartilage tissue engineering. These scaffolds serve as a convenient three-dimensional structure on which cells can grow while sensing the native environment. Natural polymer-based hydrogels are an interesting choice for such purposes, but they lack the required mechanical properties. In contrast, composite hydrogels formed by biopolymers and short peptide hydrogelators possess mechanical characteristics suitable for osteogenesis. Here, we describe how combining the short peptide hydrogelator, Pyrene-Lysine-Cysteine (PyKC), with other biopolymers, can produce materials that are suitable for tissue engineering purposes. The presence of PyKC considerably enhances the strength and water content of the composite hydrogels, and confers thixotropic behavior. The hyaluronic acid-PyKC composite hydrogels were shown to be biocompatible, with the ability to support osteogenesis, since MC3 T3-E1 osteoblast progenitor cells grown on the materials displayed matrix calcification and osteogenic differentiation. The osteogenesis results and the injectability of these composite hydrogels hold promise for their future utilization in tissue engineering.

Highlights

Scaffolds that mimic the natural state of tissue by providing a three-dimensional environment that is biocompatible, non-immunogenic, and acts as an artificial extracellular matrix (ECM), are essential for tissue engineering applications
Based on the overall properties of these materials, the composite hydrogel prepared by the combination of hyaluronic acid (HA) and PyKC was further tested for bone cell proliferation and differentiation and the results indicate that the material represents an excellent candidate for supporting osteogenic differentiation
These polymers were selected because they are all capable of forming hydrogels under different experimental conditions and have provided promising results when used as artificial ECM, either in combination with other materials or as the sole component [37]

Summary

Introduction

Scaffolds that mimic the natural state of tissue by providing a three-dimensional environment that is biocompatible, non-immunogenic, and acts as an artificial extracellular matrix (ECM), are essential for tissue engineering applications. Much attention has been focused on biodegradable and injectable hydrogels as promising candidates for matrix and scaffolds in tissue engineering [10,11,12], and natural polysaccharide-based hydrogels including chitosan (Cht), hyaluronic acid (HA), and alginate (Alg) are in common use [10,11,13,14,15,16,17] These materials fulfil the basic criteria of bio-compatibility, hydrophilicity, and capacity for high water storage in their long entangled network, which mimics the natural extracellular matrix and allows cells to adhere and differentiate.

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