Tailoring the Porosity and Morphology of Gelatin-Methacrylate PolyHIPE Scaffolds for Tissue Engineering Applications

Abstract

Gelatin is a natural protein with many desirable properties for application as a biomaterial, including scaffolding for tissue engineering. In this work gelatin A with a molecular weight in the range 50-100 kg mol-1 was modified with methacrylic anhydride and processed into a concentrated oil-in-water emulsion. Polymerization of the continuous phase gave rise to a polyHIPE, a porous material possessing a highly interconnected, trabecular morphology. In the paper, we focused on the goal of obtaining matrixes characterized by suitable sizes of both voids and interconnects, to allow an in depth colonization from transplanted cells. In this respect, we investigated the role of the volume percentage of the dispersed phase and the effect of additives. It was established that high pore volumes (>or=90%) are to be preferred, because they allow the production of solid foams characterized by average void and interconnect diameters of approximately 20 and 10 microm, respectively. These values are still inadequate for the intended application of these scaffolds but represent a good starting point for further improvements. These were achieved through the use of additives, namely sodium chloride and dimethyl sulfoxide, which partially destabilized the precursor emulsion and allowed a solid foam to be obtained with void and interconnect diameters in the range of 30-150 microm and 10-50 microm, respectively.

Microencapsulation of 1-hexadecanol as a phase change material with reversible thermochromic properties

“…39,40 Gelatin (10 g) was dissolved in 90 g phosphate buffer at pH ¼ 8 and 50 C, then methacrylic anhydride (0.41-0.82 g) was added under vigorously stirring. Aer 2 h, the reaction product was puried through dialysis for 24 h against deionized water at 40 C, followed by freeze-drying.…”

Degradable emulsion-templated scaffolds for tissue engineering from thiol–ene photopolymerisation

“…These materials, commonly termed polyHIPEs, have been prepared from a wide range of chemistries, including polystyrene 8,9 , polystyrene derivatives [10][11][12][13] , poly(meth)acrylates [14][15][16][17] , polyacrylamides [18][19][20] , poly(ether sulfone)s 21 , norbornenes 22 , poly(propylene fumarate) 23 , dicyclopentadiene 24,25 , polysaccharides 26 and proteins 27,28 .…”

“…This imparts (bio)degradability to these materials and opens up the prospect of their use as scaffolds for tissue engineering. Emulsion-templated scaffolds have previously been explored as scaffolds for tissue engineering [26][27][28][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] , however in almost all cases the materials used contain significant amounts of non-degradable carbon backbone polymer chains, potentially limiting their clinical applicability (the exception are enzymatically crosslinked gelatin scaffolds developed by Barbetta et al 28 ). In addition, non-degradable styrene-based polyHIPEs have been used extensively for in vitro 3D cell culture [42][43][44][45] …”

Graphene Oxide Nanoparticles and Their Influence on Chromatographic Separation Using Polymeric High Internal Phase Emulsions

“…The larger pore structures are known as voids while the smaller pore structures within the void are known as windows. PolyHIPEs have been successfully applied in areas such as electrochemistry [5], tissue engineering [6,7] and solid-phase extraction [8,9]. PolyHIPEs have been developed as stationary phase materials for standard-bore liquid chromatography applications, as shown in particular in [10][11][12][13].…”