The Effect of Processing Parameters and Solid Concentration on the Microstructure and Pore Architecture of Gelatin-Chitosan Scaffolds Produced by Freeze-Drying

Abstract

One of the main components for being successful in tissue engineering is developing a scaffold with an appropriate architecture for allow migration, cell proliferation, and differentiation. A gelatinchitosan scaffold by vacuum freeze-drying has been developed for tissue engineering applications. The effects of solid concentration and freezing processing on the scaffold morphology and porous size were investigated. As the chitosan content was increased the viscoelastic properties of pigskin gelatin was modified, the maximum G' values were lower than the values for pure gelatin solution, and the thermal transition points also occurred at lower temperatures, as well as a decrease of pore size tendency was observed and the scaffold visibly increased porosity, the structure scaffold was observed with an interconnected and more homogeneous pore matrix. The pore sizes become smaller and pore walls thinner, while interconnectivity increases along with declining pre-freezing temperature. The chitosan-gelatin scaffold will be a promising candidate in tissue engineering.

Rheological and viscoelastic properties of colloidal solutions based on gelatins and chitosan as affected by pH

“…For GeB:CH, the both transition temperatures increased as a function of pH, but for GeA:CH, the effect of pH was observed only for T gel‐sol (Table 3). Overall, these temperatures were always higher for GeB:CH than GeA:CH, indicating some loss of GeA ability to refold into triple‐helix chains in the presence of chitosan, as compared with GeB (Angulo & Sobral, 2016). No effect of pH on hysteresis was observed, remaining around 13 °C.…”

“…In this sense, blends of gelatin and chitosan have been used in studies on the development of several kind of materials, such as nanofibers (Amiri et al, 2018), scaffolds (Angulo & Sobral, 2016, Angulo et al, 2019, encapsulation by complex coacervation (Roy et al, 2018), gels (Derkach et al, 2017;Moreira et al, 2018), films (Benbettaïeb et al, 2014;Bonilla et al, 2017Bonilla et al, , 2018Bonilla & Sobral, 2019;Tessaro et al, 2021), and coatings (Zhang et al, 2020), due to the good miscibility of these biopolymers (Bonilla et al, 2017). Bonilla et al (2018) and Tessaro et al (2021) used blends of type B gelatin (GeB) and chitosan (CH) loaded with eugenol and ginger essential oil and W/O/ W double emulsion loaded with "pitanga" leaf hydroethanolic extract, respectively, to produce active films.…”

Dextran hydrogels incorporated with bioactive glass-ceramic: Nanocomposite scaffolds for bone tissue engineering

“…4(A)), respectively. While pore size is largely governed by freezing temperature, pore homogeneity is achieved by controlling freezing rate and providing a uniform contact surface (Angulo & Sobral, 2016). The freeze-drying condition was same for all of the samples, then this factor cannot be responsible for increased porosity of the scaffolds.…”

Influence of the processing variables on the microstructure and properties of gelatin‐based scaffolds by freeze‐drying

“…Moreover, the modification of the initial formulation used is considered as the easiest way to tailor the properties of scaffolds. For that reason, most of the studies carried out are focused on the evaluation of the properties of scaffolds fabricated using a specific method, which is known to work properly, and assessing different formulations . However, only a few are based on the evaluation of the variation of one of the processing parameters involved (i.e., the cooling rate) .…”