| AVS 57th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Biomaterial Interfaces | Thursday Sessions |
| Session BI-ThP |
| Session: | Biomaterial Interfaces Poster Session |
| Presenter: | M. Yanez, University of Texas at el Paso |
| Authors: | M. Yanez, University of Texas at el Paso T. Boland, University of Texas at el Paso |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
The printable biological ink on gelatin is a biopolymer that could be use in a handheld, portable device, such as a ink jet of printer and become a substrate for advanced wound care. Skin is very affected by when burned, and also by diabetic venous ulcers. Currently, some skin substitutes exist that for treatment of diabetic foot ulcers, but these products are really expensive. Based on this we want to create a low cost wound care material that helps not only people with diabetic foot ulcers and venous leg ulcers, but also with burned skin. We selected sodium alginate because it is a FDA approved carbohydrate that has many applications for tissue regeneration and cell therapy, and it is very compatible with human body. Oxidation of sodium alginate has been investigated to obtained alginate dialdehyde (ADA). Alginate dialdehyde is a fast acting self-crosslinking degradable polymer, when applied over collagen or gelatin. We investigated, the degree of oxidation, the degree of cross-linking and mechanical properties of the materials. The degree of crosslinking was determined by trinitrobenzene sulphonic acid assay maintaining constant ADA concentration in borax or PBS buffer and varying concentration of gelatin in borax or PBS. An increase of the degree of oxidation of sodium alginate, an increase in the cross-linking and a decrease of the gelling time was observed with increasing ADA concentration. We investigated the effect of ADA concentration on viscosity and found that at concentrations of about 10% ADA, the solutions are viscous. We will present data on the use of ADA solution as an ink in a printing device and the effect of printed ADA to cross-link gelatin. In general, control over the concentrations of ADA as well as the spatial dispensing via printing should allow us to generate wound dressings of tunable properties. The use of a portable device makes this solution attractive to low resource settings. Future work will include testing the wound dressing in a small animal model and investigating the effect of adding keratinocytes as well as endothelial cells to the material on healing and wound contraction.