Marwa Tallawi, Ranjana Rai, Marina Costa, Judith A. Roether, Dirk W. Schubert, and Aldo R. Boccaccini
Thermal proteins, degradation, poly(glycerol sebacate), cardiac tissue engineering
Scaffolds for cardiac tissue engineering must be designed to achieve adequate degradation kinetics and mechanical properties. In this study, bulk modification of poly(glycerol sebacate) (PGS) with different concentrations of thermal proteins (TP) was investigated to tailor the degradation properties of PGS. TP are poly-amino acids formed by heating a mixture of amino acids with minimal proportions of glutamic or aspartic acid. The degradation study of TP-PGS was performed in vitro in phosphate buffered saline (PBS) solution over a 21 day period. Results showed that the degradation rate of PGS increased with increasing content of TP. After 21 days in PBS, degradation weight loss values of 9.40% ± 0.07, 7.3% ± 0.8 and 6.0% ± 0.4 were determined for PGS-TP-2g, PGS-TP-0.01g and PGS-control, respectively. The studies also showed that TP altered the mechanical properties and surface hydrophilicity of PGS.
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