Objective(s): One of the main constraints of collagen hydrogel scaffolds for using in tissue engineering is mechanical weakness. Plastic compression (PC) is a physical method to overcome the mechanical limitation of collagen hydrogel. Materials and Methods: In this study, the effects of pH on mechanical and biological properties of PC hydrogels were investigated. Collagen hydrogels were fabrica...

With the advent of the genomic revolution and the sequencing of the human genome complete, the majority of pharmaceuticals under development are proteins. Consequently, new techniques to more effectively administer these new protein therapeutics need to be developed. One method that is gaining popularity in the research community involves the use of responsive hydrogel actuators for flow contro...

Several kinds of biodegradable hydrogels were prepared via in situ photopolymerization of Pluronic F127/poly(ε-caprolactone) macromer and acrylic acid (AA) comonomer in aqueous medium. The swelling kinetics measurements showed that the resultant hydrogels exhibited both thermoand pH-sensitive behaviors, and that this stimuli-responsiveness underwent a fast reversible process. With increasing pH...

Hydrogel actuators were prepared by combining ionoprinting technique with reversible metal ion coordination chemistry found in mussel adhesive proteins. Hydrogels were formulated with biomimetic dopamine moiety, which contains a catechol side chain that is capable of forming mono-, bis-, and tris-complexes with ferric (Fe 3+ ) ions with increasing pH. CatecholFe 3+ complexation increased local ...

The effects that an increase of environmental pH has on the triple helix of scleroglucan (Sclg) and on the Sclg/borax hydrogel are reported. Rheological experiments show that the hydrogel is less sensitive to pH increase than Sclg alone, while at pH = 14 a dramatic viscosity decrease takes place for both systems. This effect is evidenced also by the reduced water uptake and anisotropic elongati...

In this work, a series of hydrogel nanocomposites were prepared by grafting acrylic acid and acrylamide on gelatin in the presence of Na-montmorillonite (Na-MMT) nanoparticles. The characterizations of hydrogel nanocomposites were examined by swelling experiments, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, X-Ray diffraction (XRD) patterns and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). Scanning ele...

A new type of biosensor is proposed that combines the recognition properties of "intelligent" hydrogels with the sensitivity and reliability of microfabricated pressure transducers. In the proposed device, analyte-induced changes in the osmotic swelling pressure of an environmentally responsive hydrogel are measured by confining it within a small implantable enclosure between a rigid semipermea...

We present a molecular theory to study the adsorption of different species within pH-sensitive hydrogel nanofilms. The theoretical framework allows for a molecular-level description of all the components of the system, and it explicitly accounts for the acid-base equilibrium. We concentrate on the adsorption of hexahistidine, one of the most widely used tags in bio-related systems, particularly...

Injectable Hydrogels In article number 2101284 by Chien-Chi Lin and co-workers, a biocompatible pH/thermo dual responsive injectable hydrogel is synthesized reversible addition-fragmentation chain-transfer (RAFT) polymerization acylhdrazone click chemistry. Upon injection, sol-gel transition occurs rapidly at body temperature the porous hydrogels degrade slowly under mild acidic condition due t...

A novel hydrogel film with a highly ordered macropore monolayer on its surface was prepared by templated photo-polymerization of hydrogel monomers on a two-dimensional (2D) polystyrene colloidal array. The 2D inverse opal hydrogel has prominent advantages over traditional three-dimensional (3D) inverse opal hydrogels. First, the formation of the 2D array template through a self-assembly method ...