An enzyme-incorporated hydrogel made of alginate and polyacrylamide shows a linearly increased activity with the enlargement of surface area upon stretching.

Biomaterial injection-based therapies have showed cautious success in restoration of cardiac function and prevention of adverse remodelling into heart failure after myocardial infarction (MI). However, the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. Computational studies utilised simplified representations of the therapeutic myocardial injectates. Wistar rats underwent experimental infarctio...

In the present work, a novel interpenetrating polymer network (IPN) hydrogel composed of crosslinked chitosan and poly(acryl acid) was prepared by crosslinking using glutaraldehyde. The model drug, cis-platin, was loaded into the resulted IPN hydrogel. Water absorption of the hydrogel could be switched on and off swiftly by control of pH of the surrounding environment. Therefore, the synthesize...

Hydrogels with organized structure have attracted remarkable attentions for bio-related applications. Among the preparation of hierarchical hydrogel materials, fabrication of hydrogel with multi-layers is an important branch. Although the generation mechanism of layers had been fully discussed, sub-layer structure was not sufficiently studied. In this research, multi-layered chitosan hydrogel w...

We present unique molding/bonding processes to fabricate microstructured Ca-alginate hydrogel plates. We employed propylene glycol alginate (PGA), an ester derivative of alginate, which suppresses the shrinkage of sodium alginate (NaA) during the gelation process, and prepared microstructured hydrogel plates via molding. Also, a bonding procedure utilizing polycation coating is presented to obt...

We numerically demonstrated the characteristics of a functional hydrogel layer on a silicon-based grating waveguide for a simple, cost-effective refractive index (RI) biochemical sensor. The RI of the functional hydrogel layer changes when a specific biochemical interaction occurs between the hydrogel-linked receptors and injected ligand molecules. The transmission spectral profile of the grati...

In this work, we aim to develop a dual drug delivery system (DDDS) of self-assembled micelles in thermosensitive hydrogel composite to deliver hydrophilic and hydrophobic drugs simultaneously for colorectal peritoneal carcinomatosis (CRPC) therapy. In our previous studies, we found that poly(ε-caprolactone)-poly(ethylene glycol)-poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCEC) copolymers with different molecular we...

Hydrogels' applications are usually limited by their weak mechanical properties. Despite recent great progress in developing tough hydrogels, it is still challenging to achieve high values of , toughness and modulus all together in synthetic hydrogels. In this paper, we designed highly stretchable, tough, yet stiff hydrogel composites via a combination of nanoscale hybrid crosslinking and macro...

Hydrogels of 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) cross-linked with N,N′-cystaminebis(acrylamide) (CBA) were prepared inside microchannels using an in situ photopolymerization for the study of chemical-responsive microgels. By chemically reducing disulfide bonds with dithiothreitol (DTT), the cross-link density of the hydrogel network decreased, leading to an observable swelling of the hydrogel. ...

A hydrogel intracorneal lens for refractive keratoplasty must have predictable and stable optics when implanted in the corneal stroma. A series of experiments was performed to evaluate the hydrogel hydration stability when in the corneal stromal environment. Hydrogel ICLs of 54%, 63%, 66% and 71% water content showed no loss of hydration (by weight) after one week in the rabbit corneal stroma. ...