Effect of Chemical Composition Variant and Oxygen Plasma Treatments on the Wettability of PLGA Thin Films, Synthesized by Direct Copolycondensation

Abstract

The synthesis of high molecular weight poly (lactic-co-glycolic) acid (PLGA) copolymers via direct condensation copolymerization is itself a challenging task. Moreover, some of the characteristic properties of polylactide (PLA)-based biomaterials, such as brittleness, hydrophobicity, and longer degradation time, are not suitable for certain biomedical applications. However, such properties can be altered by the copolymerization of PLA with other biodegradable monomers, such as glycolic acid. A series of high molecular weight PLGAs were synthesized through the direct condensation copolymerization of lactic and glycolic acids, starting from 0 to 50 mol% of glycolic acid, and the wettability of its films was monitored as a function of the feed molar ratio. Copolymerization was performed in the presence of a bi-catalytic system using stannous chloride dihydrate and methanesulfonic acid (MSA). The viscosity average molecular weight of the resulting PLGA was in the range of 80k to 135k g/mol. The PLGA films were prepared using the solvent casting technique, and were treated with oxygen plasma for 2 min. The water contact angle of the PLGA films was determined before and after the oxygen plasma treatments, and it was observed that the wettability increased with an increase in the glycolic acid contents, however, the manifolds increased after 2 min of oxygen plasma treatments.

Accelerated degradation of HAP/PLLA bone scaffold by PGA blending facilitates bioactivity and osteoconductivity

“…5 (a). Previous studies indicated that PLLA was a relatively hydrophobic material with a very low water uptake [ 42 ], while PGA was relatively hydrophilic material with a very high water uptake [ 43 ]. The water absorption of the PLLA/PGA/HAP scaffolds changed with ratios of PLLA/PGA, and it increased with increasing content of PGA.…”

Tendon Biomimetic Electrospun PLGA Fleeces Induce an Early Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition and Tenogenic Differentiation on Amniotic Epithelial Stem Cells

“…Even if natural substances such as collagen and fibrin [48] are more biocompatible, many synthetic polymers have been used in tendon tissue engineering such as PCL [14,49], PLLA [47,50], chitosan [51], a mixture of polymer PLLA/PCL [52], PCL/Gel [53,54], and PLGA, which has been widely used in tendon tissue engineering [16,40,[55][56][57]. This material has been chosen to fabricate the fleece used in this work since it is FDA-approved and provides sufficient control of degradation [58,59] combined with a sufficient mechanical strength that fosters its application for tissue remodeling and regeneration [60,61]. Moreover, in a previous study it has been demonstrated that PLGA is highly biocompatible for oAECs, the cells chosen to test the fabricated fleeces, and that the chemistry of the fleece influences their penetration and distribution within the construct, efficiently sustaining and stimulating cell adhesion, viability, and proliferation [62].…”

Fabrication and Plasma Surface Activation of Aligned Electrospun PLGA Fiber Fleeces with Improved Adhesion and Infiltration of Amniotic Epithelial Stem Cells Maintaining their Teno-inductive Potential

“…The advantages of this technique rely on the possibility to control and tune all process parameters avoiding in turn nanofibrous structure damages [29]. Different working gases such as air, oxygen (O 2 ), nitrogen (N 2 ), ammonium (NH 3 ), argon (Ar), or helium (He) have been used for this purpose [29,[43][44][45][46][47][48]. Most of studies concerning plasma activation of electrospun scaffolds have focused on PCL [29,46,47,[49][50][51] and PLLA [52][53][54][55][56][57][58] while those concerning PLGA [48,[59][60][61][62] are few and still neglected in the literature although its wide application range in the field of tissue engineering [63].…”