Uso de genipina para entrecruzar biomateriales basados en colágeno y quitosano

Abstract

The application of tissue engineering represents a breakthrough in the fields of cell therapy and regenerative medicine, being one of the advances in biomedicine with greatest impact on the health sector. It is based on the manufacture of biomaterials (called scaffolds) in which cell growth and proliferation takes place. In this sense, the main objective of this work was to evaluate the influence of genipin (crosslinking agent) on the properties of scaffolds based on combinations of collagen and chitosan. For this reason, the different systems developed were characterized mechanically and microstructurally to compare their properties. The results obtained show that scaffolding properties depend largely on the concentration of biopolymer used and the concentrations of the crosslinking agent. According to the results, the best mechanical properties were obtained for hybrid systems with high concentrations of biopolymers (2% weight). Moreover, the addition of a small amount of genipin as a crosslinking agent improved the systems with low concentrations of biopolymers (1% weight), showing greater improvement in the mechanical properties, especially in its critical strain.