Development and analysis of chitin/cellulose reinforced galactomannan fluidic hydrogel for drug delivery application

Rising demand for advanced materials in biomedical applications has made the development of effective hydrogels a critical focus, especially for drug delivery. Herein, a novel fluidic hydrogel with high drug-loading (>95 %) capacity was developed for controlled release of acetylsalicylic acid. Nature-derived galactomannan (GM) was served as the hydrogel matrix, and chitin nanocrystals (ChNC) and cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) were used to enhance structure and antimicrobial properties. Physical crosslinking of the components were tuned to optimize the porosity, flowability, and mechanical strength of the materials, as well as improving rheology and enabling rapid self-healing within 60 s. Co-culturing experiments demonstrate excellent biocompatibility of both ChNC@GM and CNC@GM hydrogels. Moreover, ChNC@GM shows superior 82 % antimicrobial activity, and the hydrogel exhibits pH-responsive drug release. Therefore, the proposed fluidic hydrogel may act as promising material for applications fields of wound healing, drug delivery, and biomedical engineering, etc.