Tuning Bulk Hydrogel Degradation by Simultaneous Control of Proteolytic Cleavage Kinetics and Hydrogel Network Architecture.

ABSTRACT: Degradation of three-dimensional hydrogels is known to regulate many cellular behaviors. Accordingly, several elegant approaches have been used to render hydrogels degradable by cell-secreted proteases. However, existing hydrogel systems are limited in their ability to simultaneously and quantitatively tune two aspects of hydrogel degradability: cleavage rate (the rate at which individual chemical bonds are cleaved) and degraded hydrogel architecture (the network structure during degradation). Using standard peptide engineering approaches, we alter the proteolytic kinetics of the polymer cleavage rate to tune gel degradation time from less than 12 h to greater than 9 days. Independently, we vary the cross-linker functionality to achieve network architectures that initially have identical m

SUBMITTER: Madl CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7286611 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature