Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Chen, Jun
• Dong, Qiuchen
• Ma, Xiaoyu
• Fan, Tai-Hsi
• Lei, Yu

Titel

Repetitive Biomimetic Self-healing of Ca(2+)-Induced Nanocomposite Protein Hydrogels

Ist Teil von

• Scientific reports, 2016-08, Vol.6, p.30804

Ort / Verlag

England

Erscheinungsjahr

2016

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Self-healing is a capacity observed in most biological systems in which the healing processes are autonomously triggered after the damage. Inspired by this natural behavior, researchers believed that a synthetic material possessing similar self-recovery capability could also be developed. Albeit various intrinsic self-healing systems have been developed over the past few decades, restriction on the biocompatibility due to the required synthetic conditions under extreme pH and with poisonous cross-linker significantly limits their application in biomedical field. In this study, a highly biocompatible nanocomposite protein hydrogel with excellent biomimetic self-healing property is presented. The self-healing protein gel is made by inducing calcium ions into the mixture of heat-induced BSA nano-aggregates and pristine BSA molecules at room temperature and under physiological pH due to the ion-mediated protein-protein association and the bridging effect of divalent Ca(2+) ions. The as-prepared protein hydrogel shows excellent repetitive self-healing properties without using any external stimuli at ambient condition. Such outstanding self-recovery performance was quantitatively evaluated/validated by both dynamic and oscillatory rheological analysis. Moreover, with the presence of calcium ions, the self-healing behavior can be significantly facilitated/enhanced. Finally, the superior biocompatibility demonstrated by in vitro cytotoxicity analysis suggests that it is a promising self-healing material well-suited for biomedical applications.