Authors:

Nikki Kulkarni

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About Paper:

Biomaterials with tunable degradability to optimize drug delivery and create space for new tissue growth are becoming increasingly necessary for tissue engineering applications. Granular hydrogels are an emerging class of biomaterials with inherent porosity and injectability that have proven to be superior in terms of promoting cell growth as compared to non-porous bulk hydrogels. However, most granular hydrogels are made from covalently crosslinked polymers that show long-term stability raising concerns of unwanted long-term presence in the body. Our study aims to fill an important gap in literature by developing a granular hydrogel system with tunable degradation rate. We synthesized degradable and non-degradable photocurable polymers based on norbornene modified hyaluronic acid and used a microfluidics approach to create spherical polymer droplets that are photo-crosslinked into 100-150 μm microgels. A fluorescent molecule (fluorescein dextran) was encapsulated within the microgels to mimic a drug and a separate fluorescent molecule (rhodamine-thiol) was covalently attached to the polymer to track microgel degradation. Release of the drug mimic was tracked through characterizing the concentration of supernatant over time using a plate reader and morphological degradation was analyzed using fluorescence microscopy. We found that the degradation rate can be tuned by changing the concentration of the polymer, with lower concentrations degrading faster than higher ones. Future work will characterize degradation kinetics and changes in mechanical properties as a function of polymer concentration. Completion of these studies will establish a novel formulation of degradable granular hydrogels that can be used for diverse applications in tissue engineering.

Source:

Purdue University / 2023

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Co-authors:

Nikki Kulkarni