Synthesis of heat-resistant fish gelatin gel by radiation-induced crosslinking

Gelatin is a kind of protein obtained by the partial hydrolysis of collagen derived from bone, skin and scale of animals such as porcine, bovine, and fish. It has been widely used as gelling agent in many fields such as food, cosmetic, pharmaceutical, and medical because of its multifunctional continent: biological origin, non-antigenicity, biocompatibility and biodegradability. In recent years, there are many researches that improve the heat-resistant at 37 °C and gel strength of porcine and bovine gelatin through the crosslinking by irradiation method without toxic chemicals as crosslinker, their elastic modulus were insufficient for the practical use of biomedical device (10 - 100 kPa). However, products made of mammalian gelatins have concern with ethic problem or religious issue for clinical medicine and tissue engineering. From this necessary demand, fish gelatin can replace and resolve this disadvantage of porcine and bovine ones. Although melting point of fish gelatin gel was lower than mammalian one, recently, it have been reported successfully obtained gelatin having high melting point of 24 °C from Tilapia fish scale by pre-treatment. In this work, hydrogels derived from fish gelatin with different molecular weights were produced by quantum beam in order to improve their heat-resistant, production yields and mechanical property.The 13th meeting of the “Ionizing Radiation and Polymers” symposium (IRaP2018