Synthesis and Characterization of an Injectable Hydrogel with Tunable Mechanical Properties for Soft Tissue Repair

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• 作者：Emily Ho ; Anthony Lowman ; and ; Michele Marcolongo
• 刊名：Biomacromolecules
• 出版年：2006
• 出版时间：November 2006
• 年：2006
• 卷：7
• 期：11
• 页码：3223 - 3228
• 全文大小：177K
• 年卷期：v.7,no.11(November 2006)
• ISSN：1526-4602

文摘

Injectable polymers are attractive materials for the fixation or augmentation of soft tissues. Thermosensitivehydrogels, especially poly(N-isopropylacryamide), have been investigated for these applications to exploit thelower critical solution temperature (LCST) which falls between room and body temperatures. One limitation tothe material is the ability to withstand loading. In this work, we evaluated an injectable material system, poly(N-isopropylacryamide)-co-poly(ethyleneglycol) dimethacrylate, with the addition of trimethacryloxypropyltrimethoxysilane (MPS). Our goal was to investigate the potential to tune the mechanical behavior of the injectablehydrogel. Addition of MPS to the hydrogel increased the compressive modulus but did not affect the LCST ofthe hydrogel. An increase in ion concentration of the immersion media resulted in less solution uptake by thehydrogels, regardless of MPS presence in the system. The challenge of this material system is to balance thenetwork-forming and modulus-enhancing MPS while maintaining an injectable hydrogel for potential soft tissuerepair.