Preparation and evaluation of gellan gum hydrogel reinforced with silk fibers with enhanced mechanical and biological properties for cartilage tissue engineering

Abstract

Various research about cartilage regeneration using biomaterials has been done recently. Particularly, gellan gum hydrogel (GG) is reported to be suitable as a biomaterial for cartilage tissue engineering (TE) for its water uptaking ability, producibility, and environmental resemblance of native cartilage. Despite these advantages, mechanical and cell adhesion properties are still difficult to modulate.Reinforcement is essential to overcome these problems. Herein, GG was modified by physically blending with different lengths of silk fiber (SF). As SF is expected to improve such disadvantages of GG, mechanical and biological properties were characterized to confirm its reinforcement ability. Mechanical properties such as degradation rate, swelling rate, compression strength, and viscosity were studied and it was confirmed that SF significantly reinforces the mechanical properties of GG. Furthermore, in vitro study was carried out to confirm morphology, biocompatibility, proliferation, and chondrogenesis of chondrocytes encapsulated in the hydrogels. Overall, chondrocytes in the GG blended with SF (SF/GG) showed enhanced cell viability and growth. According to this study, SF/GG can be a promising biomaterial for cartilage TE biomaterial. K E Y W O R D Schondrogenesis, gellan gum, hydrogel, silk fiber, tissue engineering | INTRODUCTIONCartilage defects can occur by various causes such as injuries, diseases, aging, etc. and they are relatively difficult to regenerate naturally due to lack of blood vessel, an insufficient number of progenitor cells, and slow turnover of a cartilaginous matrix. Defected cartilage may advance to other severe chondral diseases. Therefore, the necessity of proper treatment for cartilage regeneration is highlighted. The current treatments include chondrocytes implantation, allografting, and drilling (Musumeci et al., 2013), but these procedures do not provide a high success rate due to body immune response and the complexity of the procedure. Tissue engineering (TE) for cartilage regeneration has been rapidly taken place as it emerged as an excellent approach for tissue repair. Numerous types of synthetic and natural biomaterials were produced for cartilage TE purposes (Cao et al., 2014;Ge et al., 2012;Stoddart et al., 2009). Among these types, hydrogels have gained attention recently for their excellent biocompatibility and

Preparation and Characterization of Alginate Hydrogel Fibers Reinforced by Cotton for Biomedical Applications

“…Various studies have been reported to improve the mechanical properties of soft tissue scaffolds, and they achieve modulus ranging from KPa to MPa [ 52 ]. In a study, silk fibers were used as reinforcement to improve the mechanical properties of gellan gum hydrogel, but could achieve a maximum of 0.4 MPa modulus [ 53 ]. In another study, hydrogel for tissue engineering scaffolds has been developed using sodium alginate, gelatin, and soy protein powder and could get a 256.7 kPa modulus [ 54 ].…”

Microfibre-Functionalised Silk Hydrogels

“…Reinforcing hydrogels with silk microfibres broadens their use in biomedical and engineering applications. For example, fibre-reinforced hydrogels have increased mechanical strength, making them useful for hard tissue engineering applications [ 14 , 15 , 32 ]. This ability to tune the hydrogel mechanical properties is critical as it enables matching of the construct to a wider set of target tissues (which can have a broad spectrum of mechanics).…”

Functional biomaterials for biomimetic 3D in vitro tumor microenvironment modeling

“…GG is viewed as a promising material in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine as a result of this. The extensive use of GG in the engineering of spinal cord injury regeneration and the regeneration of cartilage, bone, osteochondral, and other tissues is evidence of this [211][212][213]. Table 3 shows the use of biomaterials to generate 3D tumor models.…”