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Review
. 2023 Mar 2:11:1127757.
doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2023.1127757. eCollection 2023.

Photocrosslinkable natural polymers in tissue engineering

Seo Hyung Moon  1 , Hye Jin Hwang  1 , Hye Ryeong Jeon  2 , Sol Ji Park  2 , In Sun Bae  1 , Yun Jung Yang  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Photocrosslinkable natural polymers in tissue engineering

Seo Hyung Moon et al. Front Bioeng Biotechnol. .

Abstract

Natural polymers have been widely used in scaffolds for tissue engineering due to their superior biocompatibility, biodegradability, and low cytotoxicity compared to synthetic polymers. Despite these advantages, there remain drawbacks such as unsatisfying mechanical properties or low processability, which hinder natural tissue substitution. Several non-covalent or covalent crosslinking methods induced by chemicals, temperatures, pH, or light sources have been suggested to overcome these limitations. Among them, light-assisted crosslinking has been considered as a promising strategy for fabricating microstructures of scaffolds. This is due to the merits of non-invasiveness, relatively high crosslinking efficiency via light penetration, and easily controllable parameters, including light intensity or exposure time. This review focuses on photo-reactive moieties and their reaction mechanisms, which are widely exploited along with natural polymer and its tissue engineering applications.

Keywords: catalyst; photo-crosslinking; photo-reactive moiety; photoinitiator; polymerization.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Overview of tyrosyl residue crosslinking mechanisms initiated by (A) UV light (Correia et al., 2012), (B) Ru (Ⅱ) polypyridine (Fancy and Kodadek, 1999), and (C) riboflavin (Liu et al., 2021).
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
(A) Diverse methacryloyl substitution in methacrylic alginate induced by methacrylic anhydride, glycidyl methacrylate, and 2-aminoethyl methacrylate (Hasany et al., 2021), and (B) light-activated chain polymerization that occurred between two methacryloyl moieties (red: photo-reactive residues) (Bupphathong et al., 2022).
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Common photoinitiators: (A) Irgacure 2959, (B) lithium phenyl-2,4,6-trimethylbenzoylphosphinate, (C) ruthenium (Ⅱ)/persulfate, (D) eosin Y, and (E) riboflavin (Mu et al., 2020).
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
The protein polymerization mechanism through photocrosslinking of (A) diazirine and (B) benzophenone.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Brief mechanism of (A) cyclobutane and (B) (2 + 2) photocycloaddition (Gupta et al., 2004; Sarkar et al., 2020).
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
(A) LAP decomposition by UV and (B) thiol–norbornene photo-click reaction step with a thiol–containing molecule (R1–SH) (Lin et al., 2015).
FIGURE 7
FIGURE 7
(A) Aryl azide moiety is converted into highly reactive nitrene by releasing N₂ under UV light (Tanaka et al., 2008) and (B) azide-chitosan-lactose (Az-CH-LA) obtained by photo-crosslinking (Az-CH) and dehydration condensation reaction (CH-LA) (Ono et al., 2001; Tanaka et al., 2008).
FIGURE 8
FIGURE 8
The mechanism of (A) eosin-based photopolymerization and its (B) hydrogel formation (Noshadi et al., 2017).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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