Comparative Study Of Two Chitosan-based Composite Hydrogels

The treatment for bone defect which is a common clinical disease mostly caused by trauma, infection, tumors, usually requires bone transplantation in the treatment. Currently, the main treatment options include autografts, allografts and bone tissue engineering. Among these treatment options, bone tissue engineering is paid the widest attention. Calcium phosphate-based ceramic materials are one of the most common bone tissue engineering scaffolds. Due to the high density of calcium phosphate-based ceramics in vivo degradation is very slow, some methods such as sol-gel is used to prepare biodegradable calcium phosphate-based ceramic materials with a high porosity and a high interconnection. Many composite polymer gels are biodegradable materials with good biocompatibility, which can be compounded into the outer wall of the hole to improve the biological properties of the calcium phosphate ceramic materials. The design and selection of composite gel material will be the key for that.Chitosan, a natural polysaccharide, widely exists in nature, and it has good biocompatibility and biodegradability. The chiton-based hydrogel is currently one of the most studied hydrogel materials.In our study, succinic anhydride was used to improve the solubility of chiton while gellan gum and sodium alginate were oxidated by sodium periodate for that. Two chiton-based hydrogels were prepared by the soluble chitosan and the oxidation products. They were evaluated by studying the properties of these composite hydrogels such as gelation time, swelling properties, degradation in vitro and co-culture with fibroblasts and osteoblasts. Both composite hydrogels showed good biocompatibility and biodegradability. N-succinyl chitosan/oxidized gellan gum seemed to have better properties in swelling, degradation in vitro and biocompatibility than N-succinyl chitosan/oxidized sodium alginate, which means the N-succinyl chitosan/oxidized gellan gum might be more suitable as a gel for a calcium phosphate ceramic-based composite material.