Emerging albumin hydrogels as personalized biomaterials

Research progress on albumin-based hydrogels: Properties, preparation methods, types and its application for antitumor-drug delivery and tissue engineering

“…The excellent mechanical properties of albumin-based hydrogels are mainly due to the controllable-mechanical properties (Tensile strength is in the range from serval to hundreds (kPa) and compressive strength is in the range from hundreds kPa to tens MPa, which can meet the needs of different biomedical applications, for example, soft albumin-based hydrogels can be used as injectable hydrogels, a medium-hard albumin-based hydrogel can be used as a cosmetic filling material and hard albumin-based hydrogels can be used as bone regeneration scaffolds. ), which vary from different methods of preparing albumin-based hydrogels ( Arjama et al, 2021 ; Kong et al, 2023 ). Researchers often prepare albumin-based hydrogels with specific mechanical-properties depending on the application requirements ( Ong et al, 2019 ).…”

“…Tryptophan and phenylalanine are involved in protein fibrillation through p-π stacking (Makin et al, 2005). Albumin amyloid fibrils still retain more bioactive sites of natural albumin and can be used as drug carriers to bind a wide range of biomolecules and drugs (Ong et al, 2019;Kong et al, 2023) High cell permeability The ability of nanoparticles to penetrate cell membranes is closely related to their size, shape and charge, and the rod-like structure of amyloid fibrils facilitates cellular phagocytosis (Albanese et al, 2012;Sokolova et al, 2020) Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology frontiersin.org…”

“…In general, the tensile strength of albumin-based hydrogels is in the range of tens to hundreds kPa, while their compressive strength is in the range of hundreds kPa to even tens MPa ( Zhou et al, 2018 ; Rong et al, 2022 ). Albumin-based hydrogels are similar to most protein-based hydrogels in that they have a porous-mesh structure, a high water-retention capacity, a high drug-loading capacity, and the ability to carry various types of drugs ( Chander et al, 2021 ; Kong et al, 2023 ). Using DOX as the model drug, albumin-based hydrogels were loaded up to ∼0.5 g DOX/g dry-gel in a phosphate buffer at pH 7.4 and ionic strength of 0.01 mol/L, and the albumin-based hydrogel has a drug encapsulation rate of approximately 50%, whose cumulative release rate reached over 90% ( Manokruang et al, 2014 ; Shen et al, 2018 ; Zhao et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Due to the large surface area, nano-hydrogels can be used for vein injection due to their nanoscale size and have high drug-loading efficiency. Compared to albumin-based macro-hydrogels, there is less research on micro-hydrogels and nano-hydrogels of albumin-based hydrogels ( Kong et al, 2023 ). In the future, it is an important direction to develop various sizes of albumin-based hydrogels to meet the needs of clinical applications.…”

“…However, these reviews have different emphases. For example, the review written by Kong et al provides a detailed and insightful summary on albumin-based hydrogels, however, their focus is on summarizing the use of albumin hydrogels for personalized biomaterials and 3D printing ( Kong et al, 2023 ). The review of Ong et al is a mini review, which reports current literature and critically discusses the synthesis, mechanical properties, biological effects and uses, biodegradability and cost of albumin-based hydrogels as of 2019, especially the application of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine ( Ong et al, 2019 ).…”