Fabrication and characterization of porous, degradable, biocompatible poly(vinyl alcohol)/tannic acid/gelatin/hyaluronic acid hydrogels with good mechanical properties for cartilage tissue engineering

Abstract

At present, articular cartilage repair and regeneration remain still one of the most concerned problems due to its poor self-healing capacity. Among the tissue engineering materials, hydrogel is considered an ideal candidate due to its similarity to extracellular matrices. Despite the good biocompatibility of gelatin and hyaluronic acid hydrogels, they are still limited to serve as tissue engineering materials by fast degradation rate and poor mechanical performances. In order to solve these problems, novel polyvinyl alcohol/tannic acid/gelatin/hyaluronic acid (PTGH) hydrogels are prepared by a facile physical crosslinked method. The PTGH hydrogels exhibit a high moisture content (85%) and porosity (87%). Meanwhile, the porous microstructures and mechanical properties (compressive strength: 0.85–2.59 MPa; compressive modulus: 57.88–124.27 kPa) can be controlled by adjusting the mass ratio of PT/GH. In vitro degradation analysis shows that the PTGH hydrogels can be degraded gradually in PBS solution with the presence of lysozyme. For this gel system, based on the hydrogen bonds among molecules, it improved the mechanical properties of gelatin and hyaluronic acid hydrogels. With the degradation of PTGH hydrogels, the release of gelatin and hyaluronic acid can have a continuous effort for the cartilage tissue regeneration and repair. In addition, in vitro cell culture results show that the PTGH hydrogels have no negative effects on chondrocytes growth and proliferation. In all, the PTGH hydrogels exhibit potential applications for articular cartilage tissue repair and regeneration.

Keywords:

• Cartilage tissue engineering
• gelatin
• hyaluronic acid
• hydrogels
• polyvinyl alcohol

Acknowledgment

We declare that we have no financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that can influence our work, there is no professional or other personal interest of any nature or kind in any product, service and company that could be construed as influencing the work reported in this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request from the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, grant numbers 11632013 and 82172503.