Fabrication of Salecan/poly(AMPS-co-HMAA) semi-IPN hydrogels for cell adhesion

Salecan is a novel water-soluble extracellular β-glucan and has excellent physicochemical and biological properties. A series of hydrogels were fabricated from Salecan and poly(2-acrylamido-2-methylpropanesulfonic acid-co-N-hydroxymethyl acrylamide) (poly(AMPS-co-HMAA), PAH) by semi-IPN technique. The introduction of Salecan into the PAH network endows the system with enhanced cell adhesion properties. These semi-IPN hydrogels with open interconnected pores had pH and salt-sensitive swelling behavior. The increase in the content of hydrophilic Salecan could enhance the water uptake of the hydrogels. Rheological results indicated that the incorporation of PAH into hydrogels increased the storage modulus. The degradation property of the hydrogels can be tuned by modulating the content of Salecan and BAAm. Cytotoxicity results revealed that the hydrogels were non-toxic to COS-7 cells. All these results suggested that Salecan/PAH semi-IPN hydrogels exhibited great potential for applications in soft tissue engineering.