Hydrogels in Regenerative Medicine

Date

2016-04-01

Author

Hasırcı, Nesrin
Kılıç, Cemile
Kömez, Aylin
Bahçecioğlu, Gökhan
Hasırcı, Vasıf Nejat

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Hydrogels are soft, jelly-like, polymeric networks with very high water retention capacity. They are made from natural materials or synthetic polymers. They are very important for the biomedical field because of the similarity between their mechanical and chemical properties and that of the extracellular medium, the microenvironment of a cell. They can be used in cell loaded form. High water content of the hydrogels is very suitable even without the cells in mimicking the hydrated tissues or viscous bodily fluids where they serve as a lubricant or a shape forming material. Actually cells do not like to adhere to very highly hydrophilic structures so they are very useful in applications where non-adherence is sought, like prevention of adhesion of tissues after a surgery. On the other hand, when we need the cells to attach to the hydrogels we make some chemical modifications on the material such as attaching cell adhesive arginine–glycine–aspartic acid (RGD) amino acid sequences. In this chapter the types, the sources of their starting materials, the methods of insolubilization, the network formation, the methods to use to control their properties, and their biomedical applications have been presented. Among the applications discussed are drug delivery systems, tissue engineering scaffolds, wound dressings, anti-adhesive membranes, and meshes.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/83816

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Book / Book chapter