Hybrid Hydrogels Based On Kappa-Carrageenan And Phenylalanine Derivative For Biomedical Applications

As a kind of natural polysaccharide,kappa-carrageenan(κ-CG)has been found many promising applications in fields of biomedical engineering because of its special structure and unique bioactivity of antivirus,antitumor,anticoagulant and immunity regulation.Here,we incorporated a kind of phenylalanine-derived hydrogelator into kappa-carrageenan to tune its syneresis property.The resulted hybrid hydrogels were found to show semi-interpenetrating networks inside the structures,which helped improve their performance in drug delivery and cell culture.In this project,a hydrogelator based on phenylalanine derivative was synthetized and blended with kappa-carrageenan to obtain the hybrid hydrogels.The FT-IR and SEM confirmed the existence of integrated structures and interwoven networks inside the hydrogels,and these structures suppressed the syneresis effect of kappa-carrageenan hydrogels and improved their wettability,water-resistance and thermal ability.Typically,the hybrid hydrogels could be used as drug delivery systems for stable drug release and cell culture scaffolds for promoting the cell growth and proliferation.This study paved an easy but effective way to achieve stable and biocompatible hybrid hydrogels without syneresis,which may largely broaden the applications of kappa-carrageenan in biomedical engineering.