ENGINEERING COLLAGEN MIMETIC PEPTIDE AMPHIPHILE HYDROGELS BY TUNING MECHANICAL PROPERTIES FOR BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS

Abstract

Advent of newer diseases and failure and limitations of existing therapeutics have paved the need for novel technologies like tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine requires the perfect interplay between scaffold, cells and signals for tapping its full potential. Thus, in this work, we have developed and characterized collagen mimetic peptide amphiphile hydrogel scaffold designs for L929 fibroblast cell culture through various approaches, namely: Firstly, semi-interpenetrating network hydrogel of collagen mimetic peptide amphiphile and poly (ethylene glycol) diacrylate to introduce bulk mechanical strength; secondly, covalently modified glutaraldehyde cross-linked collagen mimetic peptide amphiphile hydrogel to introduce mechanical strength on the nano-scale level by the formation of nanofiber bundles; and thirdly, nature inspired sequence modified collagen mimetic peptide amphiphile hydrogel, mimicked from the mechanically strong fiber ? silk. All the scaffold designs essentially de-couple the mechanical and biochemical cues, thus, enabling to understand the effect of individual cue.