Construction and evaluation of fibrillar composite hydrogel of collagen/konjac glucomannan for potential biomedical applications

Abstract

Konjac glucomannan (KGM) is recognized as a safe material for its health-promoting benefits and thus widely used in various fields including pharmaceutical industry. In recent decades, the combination of collagen and KGM attracts more attentions for biomedical purpose, especially the hybrid films of collagen–KGM or collagen–KGM–polysaccharide. In this study, to further and deeply develop the intrinsic values of both collagen and KGM as biomaterials, a novel kind of composite hydrogel comprising collagen and KGM at a certain ratio was fabricated under mild conditions via fibrillogenesis process of the aqueous blends of collagen and KGM that experienced deacetylation simultaneously. The chemical composition, microcosmic architectures, swelling behavior, biodegradation and dynamic mechanic properties of such resulted composite hydrogels were systematically investigated. Biologic experiments, including cell culture in vitro and hypodermic implantation in vivo, were also conducted on these collagen/KGM composite hydrogels to evaluate their biologic performances. The relevant results prove that, based on collagen self-assembly behavior, this synthesis strategy is efficient to construct a composite hydrogel of collagen/KGM with improved mechanical properties, biodegradability, excellent biocompatibility and bioactivity, which are promising for potential biomedical applications such as tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

Construction of Konjac Glucomannan/Oxidized Hyaluronic Acid Hydrogels for Controlled Drug Release

“…It can be observed that the swelling rate of all the prepared hydrogels increased, with the increase in soaking time, and finally reached a relatively stable level. It indicated that the hydrogels could swell well in the PBS solution with a pH of 7.4, which was similar to the swelling trend of the KGM hydrogels observed previously [ 31 ]. In addition, it can be seen, from the broken line diagram of gel swelling, that the swelling rate of the KGM hydrogel was higher than that of the KGM/OHA hydrogel.…”

Engineering of konjac glucomannan into respirable microparticles for delivery of antitubercular drugs

“…As expected, the percentage of mannose was higher than that of glucose, without significant differences between the original polymer and the processed samples. The molar ratio determined for the commercial KGM was 1.6, the same as described by several authors (Behera and Ray, 2016;Tang et al, 2018). However, the hydrolysis of the polymer slightly increased the relative amount of mannose measured with a small shift of the molar ratio from 1.6 to 1.7.…”

Exploiting Viscoelastic Experimental Observations and Numerical Simulations to Infer Biomimetic Artificial Tendon Fiber Designs

“…Synthetic replacements were based on textile scaffolds selected out of a list of existing substitutes (Lomas et al, 2015). However, scaffolds of the kind have been reported to show limited mechanical biocompatibility (Ratcliffe et al, 2015; Tang et al, 2018). Statistical data on the success of surgical restorations reveal rather low success rates.…”