| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 化學工程學系 === 101 === Due to the cartilage’s poor self-repairing capacity, cartilage repairs have become a growing concern. Tissue engineering has been proposed as an alternative method to repair diseased cartilage. Tissue engineering consists of cells and a biodegradable scaffold, the latter provides a suitable environment for tissue repairs and regeneration. Hydrogel scaffolds are three-dimensional in structure and are promising substrates for tissue engineering applications due to their high water content, efficient mass transfer, and ability to homogenously encapsulate cells.
In this work, we fabricated complex biodegradable and biocompatible hydrogels based on PLA-b-PEG-b-PLA (PEL) and PCL-b-PEG-b-PCL (PEC) via photo-crosslinking. These hydrogels can be used as scaffolds for chondrocyte encapsulation in cartilage tissue engineering. This study investigated the effect of the blend ratio of PEL and PEC on the hydrogel properties. The chemical structure of the copolymers can be confirmed by 1H-NMR, FT-IR and GPC. The hydrogel properties were measured by the DSC and gel content. On the degradation behavior in PBS buffer solution, L50C50 and L25C75 had a suitable degradation rate. Excess acidity could be solved through controlled the blend ratio. The same results were showed in chondrogenic medium. The SEM images showed that the pore sizes of the hydrogels were increased as the degradation time. Gene expression of encapsulated chondrocytes with different blend ratio of PEL and PEC demonstrated that aggrecan and collagen II were increased within first 2 weeks. The collagen I were decreased with culture time. Compared to other blend ratio, L50C50 hydrogels revealed a higher level accumulation of cartilage extracellular matrix by biochemical and histological analysis. Results of this study will benefit the development of hydrogel scaffolds in cartilage tissue-engineering.
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