A Highly Elastic and Rapidly Crosslinkable Elastin-Like Polypeptide-Based Hydrogel for Biomedical Applications.

ABSTRACT: Elastin-like polypeptides (ELPs) are promising for biomedical applications due to their unique thermoresponsive and elastic properties. ELP-based hydrogels have been produced through chemical and enzymatic crosslinking or photocrosslinking of modified ELPs. Herein, a photocrosslinked ELP gel using only canonical amino acids is presented. The inclusion of thiols from a pair of cysteine residues in the ELP sequence allows disulfide bond formation upon exposure to UV light, leading to the formation of a highly elastic hydrogel. The physical properties of the resulting hydrogel such as mechanical properties and swelling behavior can be easily tuned by controlling ELP concentrations. The biocompatibility of the engineered ELP hydrogels is shown in vitro as well as corroborated in vivo with subc

SUBMITTER: Zhang YN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4623594 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature