ISSN print edition: 0366-6352 ISSN electronic edition: 1336-9075 Registr. No.: MK SR 9/7 Published monthly

Characterization of albumin and hyaluronan-albumin mixed hydrogels

Pavla Hájovská, Martin Chytil, and Michal Kalina

Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovak Republic

E-mail: pavla.hajovska@stuba.sk

Received: 22 April 2021  Accepted: 25 August 2021

Abstract:

Various hydrogels prepared from natural polymers have found great use in different industries, including, but not limited to, biomedicine. Recent trends in the material development focus on the preparation of hydrogels based on two or more biopolymers to combine their properties, which leads to better performance of a resulting material. In the present work, albumin and mixed hyaluronan-albumin hydrogels were characterized using various methods. The rheological properties of the samples varied based on the sample composition. The addition of hyaluronan to the albumin samples lowered the crosslink density of the hydrogels resulting in the lower complex modulus values and the higher equilibrium swelling ratio. Increasing the ionic strength of the sample shifted the albumin denaturation temperature of the water solutions to higher temperatures and suppressed the effect of hyaluronan on the denaturation. Scanning electron microscopy images showed that the microstructure of albumin samples significantly differs from the structure of mixed hyaluronan-albumin samples. The release profiles of a reference dye (methylene blue) showed, that the diffusion of the dye was rather slow. The released amounts of a dye from hydrogel into the buffer (physiological conditions model) varied from 6.35 ± 0.35% up to 9.78 ± 1.42% (after 96 h).

Keywords: Albumin; Hyaluronan; Hydrogels; Rheology; Swelling; Diffusion

Full paper is available at www.springerlink.com.

DOI: 10.1007/s11696-021-01853-y

Chemical Papers 76 (1) 239–246 (2022)