Development of electrospun photo-crosslinkable soy protein-based scaffolds

M.D. POPOV; A.A. ALDANA; G.A. ABRAHAM

Materials International

Materials International

Año: 2020

2668-5728

The mimicking of the extracellular matrix (ECM) is essential for developing biomaterials that could modulate cell adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation. Among the techniques for reproducing the ECM morphology, electrospinning has been intensively employed to obtain nanofibrous structures. Soy protein isolate (SPI), which is composed primarily of β-conglycinin, glycinin, and lipophilic proteins, has been studied for different biomedical applications, such as wound dressing, tissue engineering, and drug delivery systems. However, the high-water solubility of electrospun proteins limits their use. In this work, we successfully synthesized soy protein isolate methacrylate (SPIMA) (54.8% modification), which could be covalently crosslinked. Then, the electrospinning processing was optimized to prepare SPIMA-based mats with homogeneous fibrous structure. The electrospun mats were then photo-crosslinked by UV radiation (λ = 365 nm) during different reaction times. The crosslinked samples showed a swollen-like structure, induced by the crosslinking process; moreover, the fibrous structure remained unaltered. FTIR spectra did not show any significant alterations after crosslinking procedure. Our results demonstrated that modified soy protein isolate is promising for producing fibrous biopolymer-based scaffolds, which have potential application in tissue engineering.