Modifying Fish Gelatin Electrospun Membranes for Biomedical Applications: Cross-Linking and Swelling Behavior

Abstract

Development of suitable membranes is a fundamental requisite for tissue and biomedical engineering applications. This work presents fish gelatin random and aligned electrospun membranes cross-linked with glutaraldehyde (GA). It was observed that the fiber average diameter and the morphology is not influenced by the GA exposure time and presents fibers with an average diameter around 250 nm. Moreover, when the gelatin mats are immersed in a phosphate buffered saline solution (PBS), they can retain as much as 12 times its initial weight of solution almost instantaneously, but the material microstructure of the fiber mats changes from the characteristic fibrous to an almost spherical porous structure. Cross-linked gelatin electrospun fiber mats and films showed a water vapor permeability of 1.37 ± 0.02 and 0.13 ± 0.10 (g.mm)/(m 2 .h.kPa), respectively. Finally, the processing technique and cross-linking process does not inhibit MC-3T3-E1 cell adhesion. Preliminary cell culture results showed good cell adhesion and proliferation in the cross-linked random and aligned gelatin fiber mats.

Repurposing fish waste into gelatin as a potential alternative for mammalian sources: A review

“…By contrast, mammalian gelatin possesses the highest gelling potential (100−300 bloom) that enables a more extensive scope of applications than fish gelatin. In this regard, various strategies have been utilized to increase the gelling strength of fish gelatin, including enzymatic modification (use of laccase, tyrosinase, and MTGase); chemical modification (Huang et al., 2019); phosphorylation by the application of phosphorus oxychloride, phosphokinase, sodium tripolyphosphate, and trisodium trimetaphosphate (Xiong et al., 2016); induction of crosslinking through aldehyde modification by introduction of covalent stable amide bonds between gelatin chains (Padrão et al., 2014); phenolic modification using ferulic acid, caffeic acid, tannic acid, gallic acid, and rutin to facilitate hydrophobic interactions among the aromatic rings and hydrophobic side chains of phenols and fish gelatin, respectively; physical modification with electrolytic or nonelectrolytic substances including salts like CaCl 2 , MgCl 2 , and NaH 2 PO 4 ; and lastly, by mechanical treatments, that is, HPP, drying, irradiation, and ultrasound (Wu et al., 2015).…”

Cold Water Fish Gelatin Methacryloyl Hydrogel for Tissue Engineering Application

“…In recent years, research related to fish gelatin extraction and its application in biomedical engineering has increased due to its advantages over mammalian gelatin. First, economical production due to use of discarded byproducts of routine fish processing, unlike mammalian gelatin, the cost of which is influenced by that of raw materials [ 7 ]; and second, fewer personal or religious restrictions (e.g., vegetarianism, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism), who may be reluctant to use mammalian-origin biomaterials [ 7 , 24 – 27 ].…”

Nanostructured scaffold with biomimetic and antibacterial properties for wound healing produced by ‘green electrospinning’

“…GL has been also found to provide hemostasis and promote cell adhesion and proliferation during wound healing [24]. However, poor mechanical properties and low thermal stability, limits the biomedical application of this material which can be improved by cross-linking [25][26][27] and/or combining with other more stable polymers [7,21,28]. Research efforts for further improvement of GL nanofibrous matrices have been mainly targeting functionalization with pharmaceutical [29,30] and bioactive agents [30][31][32][33][34][35] as well as drug release modulation.…”