Sprayable Visible-Light Kappa-Carrageenan Hy-drogel for Wound Healing

Background: Recently, soft tissue engineering emerged exten-sively all over the world due to men’s need to organ transplanta-tion and the lack of enough immune sources. Sprayable hydro-gels are distinctive material for in-situ soft tissue regeneration and skin engineering.Materials and Methods: The aim of this study was to develop sprayable visible-light crosslinked Kappa-carrageenan (κCA) hydrogel for healing wounds and investigate the role of polymer concentration (2, 4 and 6 wt.%) and degree of methacrylation (6 and 12 %) on its physical and mechanical properties. first, κCA was methacrylated by different degree and was treated using Eosin Y and triethanolamine (TEA) as the photoinitiator and co-initiator, respectively. then the samples were exposed under visible light to crosslink.Results: It was found that, the water content (91.05-95.06%), swelling ratios (11.12-20.66%) and average pore sizes (26.28-79.13 μm) were revealed to be tunable by changing the meth-acrylate κCA (KaMA) concentrations as well as methacrylation degree. Furthermore, the mechanical characteristics of KaMA hydrogels could be noticeably modulated, depending on the formulation of KaMA hydrogel. For instance, the tensile and comprehensive modules were enhanced from 68.25 to 357.73 kPa and from 213.16 to 357.73 kPa respectively, by increas-ing KaMA concentration from 2 to 6 wt.% and methacrylation degree from 6 to 12 %. Increasing the polymer concentration and degree of methacrylation reduced the gelation time to 90 s. in vitro studies revealed that visible-light crosslinked KaMA hydrogels not only was biocompatible, but also could promote the attachment and proliferation of HaLa cells, depending on the KaMA concentration and methacrylation degree. Moreo-ver, degree of methacrylation and polymer concentration af-fect primary hydrogel solution viscosity. Our results showed higher methacrylation degree and lower KaMA concentration decrease hydrogel solution viscosity which is more appropriate for spraying.Conclusion: Based on these result the hydrogel containing 4% wt KaMA with high methacrylation could be applicable biomaterial for spraying with proper mechanical, physical and biological property. It could be concluded that, visible-light crosslinked KaMA is an exclusive biomaterial which can engi-neer as a sprayable hydrogel to cover skin injuries rapidly in-si-tu, by varying methacrylation degree and KaMA concentration.

Keywords:

Kappa-Carrageenan , Sprayable Hydrogel , Visible-Light Cross-Linking