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Double crosslinking hydrogel with tunable properties for potential biomedical application

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Abstract

Weak performance of hydrogel fabricated by a sole component limits their applications. In this study, we proposed a facile preparation of hydrogels by using three natural polymers, carboxymethyl chitosan, alginate and agarose. The fabricated carboxymethyl chitosan/sodium alginate/agarose hydrogels were further treated by divalent calcium ions to form a double crosslinked network inside. These double crosslinked hydrogels showed tunable mechanical property and the compressive strength ranged from 176 Pa to 685 Pa by varying the crosslinking degree. They also exhibited excellent swelling behavior (more than 1500%), good degradability and good biocompatibility, indicating their potential for application in wound healing, drug delivery and bone tissue engineering.

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Acknowledgments

This research is funded by Chongqing Research Program of Basic Research and Frontier Technology (No.cstc2017jcyjAX0087), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (NO. XDJK2018B015), and the Innovation Program for Chongqing’s Overseas Returnees (cx2019090). We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the project funded by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No.2017 M612890), the special foundation of Chongqing Postdoctoral Science Project (No.Xm2017072) and State Key Laboratory of Silkworm Genome Biology (No.sklsgb161718-7).

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Author notes

  1. Zhi Li, Li Chen and Fangyin Dai contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Silkworm Genome Biology, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China

    Zhi Li & Fangyin Dai

  2. Chongqing Engineering Research Center of Biomaterial Fiber and Modern Textile, College of Textile and Garment, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China

    Zhi Li, Li Chen, Mengting Xu, Yan Ma & Fangyin Dai

  3. Key Laboratory of Sericultural Biology and Genetic Breeding, Ministry of Agriculture, College of Biotechnology, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China

    Lei Chen & Fangyin Dai

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  1. Zhi Li
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  2. Li Chen
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  4. Yan Ma
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Correspondence to Fangyin Dai.

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Li, Z., Chen, L., Xu, M. et al. Double crosslinking hydrogel with tunable properties for potential biomedical application. J Polym Res 27, 262 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10965-020-02242-x

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