Dynagels

 

 

Chitosan based hydrogels are biomaterials with biomedical applications, very important being drug release or tissue healing. The recently evidenced toxicity of the main crosslinking agents used up to now for chitosan gelling, give rise to an important issue for researchers.

 

The project proposes a concept of multifunctional dynamic hydrogel based on the biocompatible chitosan and therapeutic monoaldehydes, employing dynamic combinatorial chemistry principles as obtaining tool. The concept of use monoaldehydes as chitosan crosslinker is new and lays on our few previous studies which proved its feasibility.

The hydrogels will be obtained exploiting the imine forming reversibility which by forming and trans-imination processes favors a supramolecular self-assembling with combined chemical and physical crosslinking. These imine forming and trans-imination processes can be tuned by simple change of reaction conditions – leading to different morphologies. In this way, by a proper choice of the aldehyde structure and reaction conditions, hydrogel morphology can be tuned for specific bio-applications. On the other hand, the imine linkage inside hydrogels confers them dynamicity, meaning that the aldehyde can be released “on the demand” of external factors, and enriches the hydrogel intrinsic properties with new functions.