Haibin Li,Fei Jiang,Song Ye,Yingying Wu,Kaiping Zhu,Deping Wang
The strontium-substituted hydroxyapatite microspheres (SrHA) incorporated alginate composite microspheres (SrHA/Alginate) were prepared via adding SrHA/alginate suspension dropwise into calcium chloride solution, in which the gel beads were formed by means of crosslinking reaction. The structure, morphology and in vitro bioactivity of the composite microspheres were studied by using XRD, SEM and EDS methods. The biological behaviors were characterized and analyzed through inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), CCK-8, confocal laser microscope and ALP activity evaluations. The experimental results indicated that the synthetic SrHA/Alginate showed similar morphology to the well-known alginate microspheres (Alginate) and both of them possessed a great in vitro bioactivity. Compared with the control Alginate, the SrHA/Alginate enhanced MC3T3-E1 cell proliferation and ALP activity by releasing osteoinductive and osteogenic Sr ions. Furthermore, vancomycin was used as a model drug to investigate the drug release behaviors of the SrHA/Alginate, Alginate and SrHA. The results suggested that the SrHA/Alginate had a highest drug-loading efficiency and best controlled drug release properties. Additionally, the SrHA/Alginate was demonstrated to be pH-sensitive as well. The increase of the pH value in phosphate buffer solution (PBS) accelerated the vancomycin release. Accordingly, the multifunctional SrHA/Alginate can be applied in the field of bioactive drug carriers and bone filling materials.
Hui Liu,Si Chen,Huanqing Cui,Jin Hu,Hongyan Cai,Wenkai Deng
The uniformly dispersed and structured silica nanoparticles were prepared and functionalized by amino and 2-bromoisobutyrate successively. The random copolymer brushes of 2-(dimethylamino) ethyl methacrylate (DMAEMA) and 1′-(2-acryloxyethyl)-3′,3′-dimethyl-6-nitrospiro-(2H-1-benzopyran-2,2′-indoline) (SPMA) were synthesized from 2-bromoisobutyrate-functionalized silica nanoparticles by surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization (SI-ATRP). FT-IR, TGA, XPS, TEM, and EDS verified the successful immobilization of initiator and grafting of the random copolymer. Subsequently, the triple responsive behaviors including thermo-, pH- and photo-sensitivities were investigated using dynamic light scattering (DLS) as well as UV-Vis spectrometry. Furthermore, the active palladium was loaded into the hybrid silica nanoparticles and the catalytic performance was evaluated using a styrene hydrogenation reaction at different temperatures.
Fast curing hydrogels are highly valuable in the skin care industry. Multi-arm polyethylene glycol (PEG) is a commonly used crosslinking agent for the preparation of fast curing hydrogels. However, the hydrogel preparation using multi-arm PEG crosslinking agents usually requires the end group modifications of reactants, which makes the preparation process complicated and produces hydrogels with low curing rates. In the present study, a fast in situ curing hydrogel, 4-arm-PEG-succinimidyl carbonate/carboxymethyl chitosan (PEG-SC/CMCS), was prepared using 4-arm-PEG-SC as the crosslinking agent and carboxymethyl chitosan (CMCS), a derivative of natural polysaccharide with excellent comprehensive properties, as the framework without any end groups modified. The structure and properties of the prepared hydrogel were characterized by FTIR, XRD, SEM, rheology and swelling kinetics. The effects of reaction conditions on the structure and properties of hydrogel were investigated. The PEG-SC/CMCS hydrogel exhibited pH-sensitive swelling behaviors. Its application potential in skin care products is demonstrated with its excellent sustained-release performance of Vitamin C, a model drug for skin treatment, and high adsorption capacity of heavy metal ions that are easily deposited on skin surface. Our work has provided a new strategy for building multifunctional gel materials for skin care and offered a PEG-SC/CMCS hydrogel with great application potentials.