Synthesis and Characterization of Whitlockite Containing Polymeric Injectable Conductive Hydrogels for Biomedical Applications

Abstract

Human Skeleton contains 206 bones which provide support, strength and mobility to human body. These bones may fracture as a result of trauma, sports injury or disease. Treatment of the fractured and defected bones is always a matter of concern for mankind since early history. Conventional Methods of treatment like autograft, allograft used may cause potential problems for host. So researchers developed the bone tissue engineering (BTE) techniques for bone regeneration which combines use of biomaterials with principles of Engineering. Usually BTE scaffolds are static in nature and implanted in host body by surgical Invasiveness. It is needed to develop the material which can be used at irregular traumatic sites of bone with minimum invasiveness during its implant. For this purpose, we developed an injectable conductive polymeric hydrogel system that contains bone whitlockite (WH) which is a bioceramic material. WH is used to enhance the biological activity as well as conductivity of hydrogels. Prepared composite hydrogels were than characterized using FTIR which confirmed the blending of materials. Injectability of prepared hydrogels was found to be less than 30 secs with controlled gelation rate which ranges between 10-30 minutes. Viscometric analysis supported the results of Injectability and gelation rate of injectable hydrogels, as viscosity of hydrogel decreases with increase in amount of WH. Ionic conductivity of injectable hydrogels was also found to increase with increase in whitlockite concentration. Cytotoxicity of hydrogel was measured using MTT assay which confirmed that our prepared biomaterial is nontoxic and crosslinking in synthesized injectable hydrogel was confirmed by SEM imaging.