| 초록 |
Alginate gels have been used in both drug delivery and cell encapsulation applications in usually bead forms. Generally alginate gels have been produced by contacting alginate solution with CaCl2 solution. The major disadvantage of this system is that the gelation rate is too fast and hard to control; the resulting structures are not uniform (different crosslinking rates for surface and inside regions) and 3-dimensional structures with complicated shape are difficult to achieve. Also prepared alginate gels are hard to be injected (only very mildly crosslinked alginate gels can be injected). In this study, we prepared injectable alginate hydrogels with controllable gelation rate by using CaSO4 as a crosslinking agent. The gelation rate of alginate/CaSO4 mixture solution can be controlled by adjusting CaSO4 content. This alginate gel system can be injected into body or injected into molds with complicated shape to prepare 3-dimentional porous scaffolds for tissue engineering applications. Using this method, we also prepared injectable alginate/polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) blend hydrogels with different PVA composition. PVA is a synthetic polymer with good elasticity and cell compatibility. The gelation mechanism and rate control, mechanical properties and cell compatibility of the prepared alginate and alginate/PVA blend gels were investigated.
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