Hydrogels for biofabrication: synthesis, chemical and physical characterization

Regenerative medicine needs the next generation of biocompatible materials that not only function as physical scaffolds supporting cells and tissues formation, but they should also interactively promote or correct the vital processes. In this work, polymer coatings and biosynthetic materials (hydrogels) were developed and characterised that display controlled chemical and physical properties as well as biocompatibility. For the first time, PEG hydrogel coatings on glass were synthesized without chemical and photochemical initiators. They were characterised by physical methods. It was shown that such PEG hydrogels can be modified by extracellular matrix protein micropatterns suitable for controlling the mechanobiological responses of the cells. Also, it was found that despite of the high water content (~85% weight) and low crosslinking degree, collagen hydrogels used for implant production possess a physically defined surface. They are suitable as substrates for fabrication of biochip-like architectures by contact lithography techniques. Spectroscopy and scanning probe techniques were used for hydrogel characterization in their hydrated state. Atomic force and fluorescent microscopy were employed for analysis of the fabricated microstructures. Finally, microscopic protein hydrogel scaffolds were obtained by combining chemical synthesis and microfabrication techniques for applications as three-dimensional cell and tissue architectures. It was found that such hydrogels adopt and retain the defined shape with nanometer precision. The developed coatings, biochip-like architectures and three-dimensional scaffolds are promising in the fields of biology, drug research and regenerative medicine