Soyprotein fibers with high strength and water stability for potential medical applications

Abstract

Fibers with mechanical properties and water stability suitable for tissue engineering have been developed from soyproteins. Proteins are biocompatible and biodegradable and are preferred over synthetic polymers for medical applications. Although plant proteins are abundant and inexpensive and can be made into various types of scaffolds, very few attempts have been made to understand the suitability of using plant proteins for medical applications, especially as fibrous substrates for tissue engineering. So far, it has not been able to obtain good quality soyprotein fibers without using toxic crosslinking agents or blending soyprotein with synthetic polymers. In this research, we have developed 100% soyprotein fibers with good strength and water stability without using any external crosslinking agents. The soyprotein fibers have better wet strength than collagen fibers and are conducive to the attachment, growth, and proliferation of mouse fibroblasts. Fibers are better substrates than films for growth and orientation of cells and are therefore preferable for tissue engineering applications. Soyprotein fibers show good potential to be novel biomaterials with properties suitable for tissue engineering and other medical applications.

Properties and potential medical applications of regenerated casein fibers crosslinked with citric acid

“…Similar phenomenon has also been observed for other protein fibers. Regenerated protein fibers developed from wheat gluten were found to have an optimum aging time between 30 and 33 h whereas soyproteins had a much longer optimum aging time of 96 h due to the globular nature of the soyproteins [5,7].…”

“…Fibers have been produced from wheat and soyproteins using high concentrations of urea (48%) solutions and reducing agents such as sodium sulfite and cysteine [5,7]. Proteins such as zein and gliadin dissolve in 70% ethanol and fibers are produced from these proteins by dry spinning [6,8].…”

“…We have demonstrated that corn zein, wheat proteins (gluten and gliadin) and soyproteins can be used to develop high quality regenerated protein fibers [5][6][7]9]. Plant proteins have also been used to produce electrospun nanofibers for medical applications [12].…”

“…Regenerated protein fibers commonly called as azlons were commercially produced in the 1930s due to the shortage of fibers during World War II [3,4]. Regenerated protein fibers have been produced from both plant and animal proteins for textile, medical and other applications [4][5][6][7][8][9]. Zein from corn and soyproteins were the main plant proteins and collagen and chicken feathers were the main animal proteins used to develop regenerated protein fibers [3,5,8].…”

Alimentary ‘green’ proteins as electrospun scaffolds for skin regenerative engineering

“…() compared cast films made from soy protein with those made from gelatin, casein and sodium caseinate, and found that soy films were most resistant to hydrolysis, whether or not they were crosslinked; this was attributed to the globular structure of soy protein, unlike the coiled or helical structure of other proteins. Reddy and Yang () developed soy protein fibres using wet spinning without additives or crosslinking. These fibres with diameters of 50–150 µm supported the growth of mouse fibroblasts for 7 days.…”