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Silk fibroin/chitosan pH-sensitive controlled microneedles

  • Polymers & biopolymers
  • Published:
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Abstract

Silk fibroin is a widely used biocompatible medical material with tunable mechanical, degradability and environmental non-toxicity. This paper prepared the silk fibroin/chitosan hydrogel microneedle with pH sensitivity by blending silk fibroin with chitosan to induce graft cross-linking. The cross-linked silk fibroin/chitosan microneedles network is expanded by hydrogen ions and water molecules, forming a more significant swelling. In vitro, the transdermal drug release showed that insulin loaded in microneedles exhibited pH-sensitive drug release behavior and was released faster under acidic conditions than under neutral conditions. By changing the pH of the solution, microneedles can achieve a stimulating response to the environment, thereby intelligently regulating the transdermal release of insulin.

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Acknowledgements

National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51973144), Natural Science Research of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China (Grant No. 20KJA540002), PAPD and Six Talent Peaks Project in Jiangsu Province (Grant No. SWYY-038) supported this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Engineering Laboratory for Modern Silk, College of Textile and Clothing Engineering, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215123, People’s Republic of China

    Tianshuo Jia, Dajiang Kuang, Zhenzhen Qi, Guohongfang Tan, Xiaojing Yang & Shenzhou Lu

  2. I3Bs Research Institute On Biomaterials, Biodegrabilities, and Biomimetics, Headquarters of the European Institute of Excellence On Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine, University of Minho, 4805017, Barco, Portugal

    Subhas C. Kundu

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Contributions

JT wrote the paper; KD conceived and designed the experiments; QZ and TG performed the experiments; YX analyzed the data; JT contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools; KSC and LS conducted writing and review. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Shenzhou Lu.

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Jia, T., Kuang, D., Qi, Z. et al. Silk fibroin/chitosan pH-sensitive controlled microneedles. J Mater Sci 58, 17711–17725 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-023-09148-1

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