Oxidized sugar as cross-linker in electrospun mats based on soy protein isolated for tissue engineering

M. POPOV; G.A. ABRAHAM

Mar del Plata

Congreso; XX Congreso Internacional de Metalurgia y Materiales SAM-CONAMET 2022; 2022

INTEMA (UNMdP-CONICET)

The interest on the use of plant-derived proteins to develop electrospun scaffolds for biomedical applications has increased because their advantages over other polymers, such as high availability in nature, tailorable properties, biodegradability, biocompatibility, and biological activities [1]. Among the plant-derived proteins, SPI has been the most studied protein using electrospinning processing technique. However, electrospun SPI has shown high solubility in water (it lasts up to 24 h) and it is not suitable for biomedical applications. To overcome the lack of SPI water-stability, different strategies, such as chain crosslinking or blending with other polymers, have been explored [2-3]. As shown in a previous work [4], oxidized sugar (OS) has shown a great potential to cross-link electrospun soy protein-polyvinyl alcohol systems. Therefore, in this work, a sugar oxidation process was optimized, and its product was used to cross-link SPI chains in SPI-PEO electrospun mats. Different ratios of primary amino acids to oxidized sugar reactive groups (1:0.5, 1:1, and 1:2) were added to the SPI-PEO solutions and then electrospun. The microstructures were observed by SEM (Figure 1) and its possible to observe a uniform and defecteless fibrous microstructure in all samples. Further tests, such as DSC, TGA, FTIR, and degradations tests, were carried out and are still under analysis.