Browsing by Author "Xia, Jingwen"

Hyaluronic acid (HA) hydrogels are interesting biomaterials for drug delivery and tissue engineering applications. Glycidyl ether derivatives have gained much interests due to their thermo-responsive properties. Thermo-responsive random copolymers of glycidyl methyl ether (GME) and epoxyhexane (EH) were synthesized. Once their properties were studied, they were grafted onto hyaluronic acid to obtain gelation at temperatures above the phase transition temperature of poly (GME-EH). PGME is a water-soluble polymer at low temperatures, but phase separates at 57.3oC. The transition temperature of PGME is too high to be utilized in medical applications. Thus a hydrophobic monomer EH was used to decrease the transition temperature of PGME via copolymerization. Several samples of random copolymers poly (GME-EH) were successfully synthesized by anionic ring opening polymerization (AROP). The transition temperature of copolymers was characterized by NMR, turbidimetry and micro-calorimetry respectively to study the phase transition behavior. Tetraoctylammonium bromide was used as initiator resulting with a bromide as the end group. Bromide was substituted by azide group to be used in click chemistry reaction with alkyne-functional HA. The reaction of the azide group on the end of copolymer chain was detected by FT-IR spectroscopy. Grafting was achieved by click chemistry following copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC) procedure. Rheology was used to study the gelation of the final product: thermo-responsive hyaluronic acid hydrogel. However, for different reasons the final product failed to form a gel.