Development of Stimuli-Responsive Polymers for Smart Hydrogels Production

A special issue of Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360). This special issue belongs to the section "Polymer Applications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 April 2023) | Viewed by 5972

Special Issue Editor

Department of “Scienze e Tecnologie Biologiche, Chimiche e Farmaceutiche” (STEBICEF), University of Palermo, 90123 Palermo, Italy
Interests: natural polymers; polysaccharides, hydrogels; scaffold; polymer characterization, tissue engineering, biofabrication techniques.

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Hydrogels represent gold-standard devices for several biomedical applications, ranging form drug delivery to tissue engineering. Hydrogels can be formulated initially from different natural-derived and synthetic macromolecules that can be “ad hoc”designed to provide the derived hydrated three-dimensional networks with peculiar physicochemical features, which may vary depending on the external stimuli coming from the native tissues or from an external, on-demand, activable source. Furthermore, stimuli-responsive features can be provided by doping the hydrogels with advanced nanosystems with the intrinsic ability to respond to different environmental conditions or external stimuli. In this way, the hydrogel can “adapt” itself to the surrounding administration site or can facilitate the finely tunable release of bioactive molecules.

Smart hydrogels are nowadays proposed also as costituents of platforms for biosensoring in diagnostics thanks to their ability to respond to biochemical stimuli and generate specific signals. Nonetheless, the smart properties of these systems can be exploited to perform advanced fabrication techniques such as 3D printing or to produce minimally invasive injectable systems that then enable the formation of therapeutic tools once in contact with the body.

In recent years, the number of publications focusing on smart hydrogels as the principal topic has increased dramatically, demonstrating the enormous interest aroused by these systems within the scientific community, which can be explained by the awareness of the huge impact that they are anticipated to have on the development of innovative biomedical devices.

In this Special Issue, we aim to collect original research that deals with the development of smart hydrogels.

We will consider those manuscripts that describe the production of stimuli-responsive macromolecules or three-dimensional smart nanocomposites whose peculiar behaviour could be useful for biomedical applications.

Dr. Calogero Fiorica
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • Stimuli-responsive macromolecules
  • Smart hydrogels for drug delivery
  • Smart hydrogels for tissue engineering
  • Nanocomposite
  • Smart injectable hydrogel
  • Biofabrication techniques

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 7532 KiB  
Article
Conductive and Thermo-Responsive Composite Hydrogels with Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) and Carbon Nanotubes Fabricated by Two-Step Photopolymerization
by Gianluca Ciarleglio, Elisa Toto and Maria Gabriella Santonicola
Polymers 2023, 15(4), 1022; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/polym15041022 - 18 Feb 2023
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 1943
Abstract
Biocompatible and conductive polymer hydrogels are the subject of intensive research in the bioengineering field because of their use in bioelectronic devices and for the fabrication of electro-responsive tissues and drug delivery systems. In this study, we report the synthesis of conductive composite [...] Read more.
Biocompatible and conductive polymer hydrogels are the subject of intensive research in the bioengineering field because of their use in bioelectronic devices and for the fabrication of electro-responsive tissues and drug delivery systems. In this study, we report the synthesis of conductive composite hydrogels consisting of a poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) matrix embedding carboxyl-functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT-COOH) using a two-step photopolymerization method. Thermo-responsive hydrogels with controlled hydrophilicity and conductivity were prepared by varying the carbon nanotube concentration in the range 0.5–3 wt%. The thermal response of the PNIPAM-based composite hydrogels was measured by differential scanning calorimetry with both ultrapure water and PBS solution as swelling liquid. Results show that the endothermic peak associated with the temperature-induced volume phase transition (VPT) shifts to higher temperatures upon increasing the concentration of the nanotubes, indicating that more energy is required to dissociate the hydrogen bonds of the polymer/filler network. In PBS solution, the swelling ratios and the VPT temperatures of the composite hydrogels are reduced because of salt-induced screening of the oppositely charged polymer/filler assembly, and the electrical resistivity decreases by a factor of 10 with respect to the water-swollen hydrogels. Full article
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18 pages, 4023 KiB  
Article
Correlating Rheological Properties of a Gellan Gum-Based Bioink: A Study of the Impact of Cell Density
by Annalisa Martorana, Giovanna Pitarresi, Fabio Salvatore Palumbo, Giuseppe Barberi, Calogero Fiorica and Gaetano Giammona
Polymers 2022, 14(9), 1844; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/polym14091844 - 30 Apr 2022
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1909
Abstract
Here, for the production of a bioink-based gellan gum, an amino derivative of this polysaccharide was mixed with a mono-functionalized aldehyde polyethyleneglycol in order to improve viscoelastic macroscopic properties and the potential processability by means of bioprinting techniques as confirmed by the printing [...] Read more.
Here, for the production of a bioink-based gellan gum, an amino derivative of this polysaccharide was mixed with a mono-functionalized aldehyde polyethyleneglycol in order to improve viscoelastic macroscopic properties and the potential processability by means of bioprinting techniques as confirmed by the printing tests. The dynamic Schiff base linkage between amino and aldehyde groups temporally modulates the rheological properties and allows a reduction of the applied pressure during extrusion followed by the recovery of gellan gum strength. Rheological properties, often related to printing resolution, were extensively investigated confirming pseudoplastic behavior and thermotropic and ionotropic responses. The success of bioprinting is related to different parameters. Among them, cell density must be carefully selected, and in order to quantify their role on printability, murine preostoblastic cells (MC3T3-E1) and human colon tumor cells (HCT-116) were chosen as cell line models. Here, we investigated the effect of their density on the bioink’s rheological properties, showing a more significant difference between cell densities for MC3T3-E1 compared to HCT-116. The results suggest the necessity of not neglecting this aspect and carrying out preliminary studies to choose the best cell densities to have the maximum viability and consequently to set the printing parameters. Full article
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18 pages, 3972 KiB  
Article
Synthesis, Characterization, In-Vitro and In-Vivo Evaluation of Ketorolac Tromethamine-Loaded Hydrogels of Glutamic Acid as Controlled Release Carrier
by Muhammad Suhail, Chuan-Ming Shih, Jia-Yu Liu, Wan-Chu Hsieh, Yu-Wen Lin, Muhammad Usman Minhas and Pao-Chu Wu
Polymers 2021, 13(20), 3541; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/polym13203541 - 14 Oct 2021
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1416
Abstract
Glutamic acid-co-poly(acrylic acid) (GAcPAAc) hydrogels were prepared by the free radical polymerization technique using glutamic acid (GA) as a polymer, acrylic acid (AAc) as a monomer, ethylene glycol dimethylacrylate (EGDMA) as a cross-linker, and ammonium persulfate (APS) as an initiator. Increase in gel [...] Read more.
Glutamic acid-co-poly(acrylic acid) (GAcPAAc) hydrogels were prepared by the free radical polymerization technique using glutamic acid (GA) as a polymer, acrylic acid (AAc) as a monomer, ethylene glycol dimethylacrylate (EGDMA) as a cross-linker, and ammonium persulfate (APS) as an initiator. Increase in gel fraction was observed with the increasing concentration of glutamic acid, acrylic acid, and ethylene glycol dimethylacrylate. High percent porosity was indicated by developed hydrogels with the increase in the concentration of glutamic acid and acrylic acid, while a decrease was seen with the increasing concentration of EGDMA, respectively. Maximum swelling and drug release was exhibited at high pH 7.4 compared to low pH 1.2 by the newly synthesized hydrogels. Similarly, both swelling and drug release increased with the increasing concentration of glutamic acid and acrylic acid and decreased with the increase in ethylene glycol dimethylacrylate concentration. The drug release was considered as non-Fickian transport and partially controlled by viscoelastic relaxation of hydrogel. In-vivo study revealed that the AUC0–∞ of fabricated hydrogels significantly increased compared to the drug solution and commercial product Keten. Hence, the results indicated that the developed hydrogels could be used as a suitable carrier for controlled drug delivery. Full article
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