Extraction and Characterization of Collagen from Buffalo Skin for Biomedical Applications

Collagen is widely used for biomedical and pharmaceutical applications due to its excellent biocompatibility, biodegradability and weak antigenicity. However, applicability is limited due to its high cost and probability of disease transmission from the current sources, which are bovine and porcine. In the present study, collagen was extracted from 6 months buffalo skins as alternative save sources. Collagen was characterized by different physico-chemical techniques like ATR-FTIR, Raman, SEM, DSC and amino acids analysis. Proline and hydroxyproline contents of buffalo skin collagen were higher than those of calf skin collagen. Thermal stability of buffalo skin collagen is high with respect to that of calf skin collagen. The obtained buffalo skin collagen shows higher stiffness upon cross-linking with glutaraldehyde. Thus buffalo skin collagen can be used for fabrication of high strength bioactive sponge and sheets for medical applications, like scaffold for tissue engineering, drug delivery and wound dressing system. keywords: Buffalo skin; acid soluble collagen; amino acid contents; thermal stability; FTIR.