Silk fibroin aerogels: potential scaffolds for tissue engineering applications.

Silk fibroin (SF) is a natural protein, which is derived from the Bombyx mori silkworm. SF based porous materials are extensively investigated for biomedical applications, due to their biocompatibility and biodegradability. In this work, CO2 assisted acidification is used to synthesize SF hydrogels that are subsequently converted to SF aerogels. The aqueous silk fibroin concentration is used to tune the morphology and textural properties of the SF aerogels. As the aqueous fibroin concentration increases from 2 to 6 wt%, the surface area of the resultant SF aerogels increases from 260 to 308 m(2) g(-1) and the compressive modulus of the SF aerogels increases from 19.5 to 174 kPa. To elucidate the effect of the freezing rate on the morphological and textural properties, SF cryogels are synthesized in this study. The surface area of the SF aerogels obtained from supercritical CO2 drying is approximately five times larger than the surface area of SF cryogels. SF aerogels exhibit distinct pore morphology compared to the SF cryogels. In vitro cell culture studies with human foreskin fibroblast cells demonstrate the cytocompatibility of the silk fibroin aerogel scaffolds and presence of cells within the aerogel scaffolds. The SF aerogels scaffolds created in this study with tailorable properties have potential for applications in tissue engineering.

Hydrogen peroxide filled poly(methyl methacrylate) microcapsules: potential oxygen delivery materials.

This paper describes the synthesis of H2O2-H2O filled poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) microcapsules as potential candidates for controlled O2 delivery. The microcapsules are prepared by a water-in-oil solvent emulsion and evaporation method. The results of this study describe the effect of process parameters on the characteristics of the microcapsules and on their in vitro performance. The size of the microcapsules, as determined from scanning electron microscopy, ranges from ∼5 to 30 µm and the size distribution is narrow. The microcapsules exhibit an internal morphology with entrapped H2O2-H2O droplets randomly distributed in the PMMA continuous phase. In vitro release studies of 4.5 wt% H2O2-loaded microcapsules show that ∼70% of the H2O2 releases in 24h. This corresponds to a total O2 production of ∼12 cc/gram of dry microcapsules. Shelf-life studies show that the microcapsules retain ∼84 wt% of the initially loaded H2O2 after nine months storage at 2-8 °C, which is an attractive feature for clinical applications.

CO2-assisted synthesis of silk fibroin hydrogels and aerogels.

Biocompatible and biodegradable porous materials based on silk fibroin (SF), a natural protein derived from the Bombyx mori silkworm, are being extensively investigated for use in biomedical applications including mammalian cell bioprocessing, tissue engineering and drug delivery applications. In this work, low-pressure, gaseous CO2 is used as an acidifying agent to fabricate SF hydrogels. This low-pressure CO2 acidification method is compared to an acidification method using high-pressure CO2 to demonstrate the effect of CO2 mass transfer and pressure on SF sol-gel kinetics. The effect of SF molecular weight on the sol-gel kinetics is determined using the low-pressure CO2 method. The results from these studies demonstrate that low-pressure CO2 processing proves to be a facile method for synthesizing 3-D SF hydrogels.