The zein ultrafine fibers have drowned great attention in the tissue engineering field due to not only their similar architecture and components to extracellular matrices (ECMs) but also the low zoonotic disease transmission possibility.However,these fibers are difficult to meet the mechanical requirements for tissue engineering applications, because the rapid degradation and the poor water stability are the nature of protein based materials.In this research, a hybrid system of protein zein and ethylene glycol diglycidyl ether (EGDE) was developed to build a covalently linked molecular level network.The effects of EGDE on the morphological changes of scaffolds in the physiological mimic environment were observed.When the spinning solution was prepared with a zein to EGDE ratio of 10 ∶ 3, the produced scaffolds displayed a substantial reduce in morphological changes (less than 3%).The morphologies of fibers could be maintained in the liquid phase for at least 1 day.This work revealed the possibility to use this hybrid system with EGDE to stabilize and strengthen protein based materials for biomedical applications.
Jiancai Jiang Jianggui Pan Xiong Deng Xinyang Jin Hongqiao Yu Mingjun Ji Quan Zhu Wangshuang Liu Yiping Qiu Qiuran Jiang
Key Laboratory of Textile Science &Technology, Ministry of Education, College of Textiles, Donghua U National Cotton and Textile Quality Supervision and Inspection Center, Aksu, Xinjiang, China Department of Applied Chemistry, College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, Dongh Donghua University Center for Civil Aviation Composites, Donghua University, China Key Laboratory of Textile Science &Technology, Ministry of Education, College of Textiles, Donghua U