Hidrogeles inyectables basados en quitosano para su aplicación en ingeniería de tejidos

Resumen

Tissue engineering is an interdisciplinary field that combines the science of materials and biosciences towards the development of new technologies in order to restore, maintain and improve partially or totally cellular tissues. For this, this technology develops scaffolds, three-dimensional architectures consisting of structural materials (polymers) and biological materials (cells), which mimic the extracellular matrix. Polymeric hydrogels are suitable biomaterials to imitate these aspects, and that is why the last decades have witnessed the scientific interest to develop synthetic hydrogels in situ, that is, hydrogels that their gelation is only under physiological conditions to be injected and act in a localized way. This work focuses mainly on the study of chitosan hydrogels which gellated by thermal variation, based on the reversible physical interaction between chitosan and β-glycerol phosphate, which are compared with chemical hydrogels, cross-linked with genipin. The gelation time will be comparatively studied, and properties such as porosity, swelling and rheological behaviour