Assessment of chitosan:gum tragacanth cryogels for tissue engineering applications

Abstract

Gum tragacanth is one of the most widely used natural gums in food, medicine, cosmetics and personal care products, and its use as polysaccharide‐based scaffolds in tissue engineering applications has attracted great attention in recent years. The fabrication of pure gum tragacanth as a scaffold poses many challenges because of the high viscosity, poor mechanical properties and repulsive interaction between the polyanions. To overcome these, facilitate the formation of scaffolds and improve their final properties, chitosan and gum tragacanth were used together as natural, biocompatible and biodegradable polysaccharides. The scaffolds based on chitosan and gum tragacanth were successfully fabricated through cryotropic gelation and were characterized using different chemical, morphological, mechanical and biocompatibility analyses. All cryogel scaffolds exhibited a porous structure with an average diameter of 96.56–30.21 μm, exhibiting high liquid absorption capacity, appropriate mechanical stability and controlled degradation behavior. According to the biocompatibility results, mouse embryonic fibroblast cells adhered well to the scaffolds and achieved high viability. The results are also discussed in the light of their potential usefulness as a scaffold for tissue engineering applications. © 2022 Society of Industrial Chemistry.

Tragacanth gum-based hydrogels for drug delivery and tissue engineering applications

“…For accurate oxygen and nutrition supply to cells, waste elimination, vascularization, and tissue development, an open macroporous structure with connected pores is necessary. For sufficient mechanical support, elasticity is also necessary (Demir et al, 2022). These have led to the widespread usage of cryogels in recent years.…”

“…In a biocompatibility study conducted with tragacanth gum-chitosan cryogel matrix in Mouse Embryonic Fibroblast cells (MEF); significant adherence, high viability and cell interconnection network on the surface of the scaffold was confirmed. Additionally, the genotoxicity investigations showed that the scaffold has no potential for genotoxicity and did not cause DNA fragmentation (Demir et al, 2022). After taking into account all of the data, it was determined that the CS:GT cryogel scaffolds show a great deal of promise for tissue engineering applications, particularly when it comes to the restoration of soft tissues like muscle and skin, which in turn links to wound healing.…”