In vitro degradation behavior of photopolymerized PEG hydrogels as tissue engineering scaffold

PEGDA was photopolymerized to form hydrogels under different UV light irradiation times. In order to investigate the degradation rate in vitro, the various PEGDA hydrogels were incubated in PBS solution at 37 degrees C in shaking water bath system. The physical-chemical properties such as pH values, dimension, mass and volume change, compressive strength and Young's modulus were measured. MALDI-MS and SEM were employed to evaluate the PBS solutions and corroded hydrogels after a designed period of time till 8 weeks. The results indicate that the PEGDA formed hydrogels can be tailored with prompted properties specifically for various cell-based tissue engineering needs.