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Tunable methacrylated hyaluronic acid‐based hydrogels as scaffolds for soft tissue engineering applications
Author(s) -
Spearman Benjamin S.,
Agrawal Nikunj K.,
Rubiano Andrés,
Simmons Chelsey S.,
Mobini Sahba,
Schmidt Christine E.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of biomedical materials research part a
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.849
H-Index - 150
eISSN - 1552-4965
pISSN - 1549-3296
DOI - 10.1002/jbm.a.36814
Subject(s) - self healing hydrogels , materials science , tissue engineering , biomedical engineering , scaffold , hyaluronic acid , glycidyl methacrylate , neural tissue engineering , soft tissue , regeneration (biology) , composite material , polymer chemistry , polymer , anatomy , copolymer , surgery , medicine , biology , microbiology and biotechnology
Hyaluronic acid (HA)‐based biomaterials have been explored for a number of applications in biomedical engineering, particularly as tissue regeneration scaffolds. Crosslinked forms of HA are more robust and provide tunable mechanical properties and degradation rates that are critical in regenerative medicine; however, crosslinking modalities reported in the literature vary and there are few comparisons of different scaffold properties for various crosslinking approaches. In this study, we offer direct comparison of two methacrylation techniques for HA (glycidyl methacrylate HA [GMHA] or methacrylic anhydride HA [MAHA]). The two methods for methacrylating HA provide degrees of methacrylation ranging from 2.4 to 86%, reflecting a wider range of properties than is possible using only a single methacrylation technique. We have also characterized mechanical properties for nine different tissues isolated from rat (ranging from lung at the softest to muscle at the stiffest) using indentation techniques and show that we can match the full range of mechanical properties (0.35–6.13 kPa) using either GMHA or MAHA. To illustrate utility for neural tissue engineering applications, functional hydrogels with adhesive proteins (either GMHA or MAHA base hydrogels with collagen I and laminin) were designed with effective moduli mechanically matched to rat sciatic nerve (2.47 ± 0.31 kPa). We demonstrated ability of these hydrogels to support three‐dimensional axonal elongation from dorsal root ganglia cultures. Overall, we have shown that methacrylated HA provides a tunable platform with a wide range of properties for use in soft tissue engineering.