Mechanics of Gelatin and Elastin based hydrogels as Tissue Engineered Constructs
Engineered soft hydrogels have recently garnered attention for their application as scaffolds for tissue engineering,drug delivery,and as model extracellular matrices such as arteries and cartilage that experience dynamic loading.Hydrogels exhibit nonlinear,composite,viscoelastic,and anisotropic behaviors and hence,mechanical models used to describe such materials are challenging.In this study,we synthesized three dimensional gelatin and elastin hydrogels of varying compositions and crosslinking degrees and characterized their structure-property relationships.Mechanical properties were measured using monotonic compression,dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA),and quasi-static stress relaxation tests.Compressive moduli for the gels range from 1.5 to 15 kPa and these measurements correlate with the values of storage modulus obtained from DMA studies (p<0.05).Ongoing studies are aimed at using stress relaxation data to create mechanical spring-dashpot models to describe the viscoelastic behavior of these materials.Scanning electron microscopy was used to assess the gel microstructure.Our results demonstrate that varying the gelatin and crosslinker concentrations leads to significant (p<0.05) changes in pore sizes with the lowest stiffness group exhibiting considerably larger porosity.Incorporation of elastin resulted in increased stiffness,change in hydrogel microstructure and swelling properties of the hydrogels.
hydrogels viscoelasticity gelatin elastin tissue engineered scaffolds
Achu G.Byju Ankur Kulkarni Namrata Gundiah
Department of Mechanical Engineering,Indian Institute of Science,Bangalore 560012,India Biological Sciences Division,Indian Institute of Science,Bangalore 560012,India
国际会议
北京
英文
1-10
2013-06-16（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）