Nanofibrous scaffolds based on bacterial cellulose crosslinked with oxidized sucrose

In this work, oxidized sucrose (OS), which is a safe bio-based and non-toxic polyaldehyde, was used as a crosslinker in defibrillated bacterial cellulose (BC) sponges obtained by freeze-drying. For mimicking the proteins' crosslinking, BC was first modified with an aminosilane to partially replace the OH groups on the BC surface with more reactive amino groups. Further, the aminosilane-grafted bacterial cellulose (BCA) was crosslinked with OS in different concentrations and thermally cured. Functionalized bacterial celluloses showed a good thermal stability, comparable to that of unmodified cellulose and much improved mechanical properties. A threefold increase in the compression strength was obtained for the BCA scaffold after crosslinking and curing. This was correlated with the uniform pore structure emphasized by the micro-CT and SEM analyses. The OS-crosslinked BCA scaffolds were not cytotoxic and showed a porosity of around 80 %, which was almost 100 % open porosity. This study shows that the crosslinking of aminated BC scaffolds with OS allows the obtaining of 3D cellulose structures with good mechanical properties and high porosity, suitable for soft tissue engineering. The results recommend this new method as an innovative approach to obtaining biomaterial scaffolds that mimic the natural extracellular matrix.