Author(s): Batista, Miguel P. ; Schroeter, Baldur ; Fernández, Naiara ; Gaspar, Frédéric Bustos ; do Rosário Bronze, Maria ; Duarte, Ana Rita ; Gurikov, Pavel
Date: 2024
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/172747
Origin: Repositório Institucional da UNL
Subject(s): Collagen tertiary structure; physicochemical characterization; Porous biomaterials; Solid-state; Supercritical CO drying; Chemistry(all)
Funding Information: The authors acknowledge the financial support received from the INTERFACE Programme through the Innovation, Technology and Circular Economy Fund (FITEC). iNOVA4Health \u2013 UIDB/04462/2020 and UIDP/04462/2020, a program financially supported by Funda\u00E7\u00E3o para a Ci\u00EAncia e Tecnologia/Minist\u00E9rio da Ci\u00EAncia, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior, through national funds are acknowledged. Financial support received from The Associate Laboratory LS4FUTURE supported by Funda\u00E7\u00E3o para a Ci\u00EAncia e a Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal) through the funding LA/P/0087/2020 (DOI 10.54499/LA/P/0087/2020 ) are acknowledged. This work also received funding from the ERC\u20102016\u2010CoG 725034 and was supported by the Associate Laboratory for Green Chemistry (LAQV), financed by national funds from FCT/MCTES (UIDB/50006/2020). The authors acknowledge the financial support received from the Coopera\u00E7\u00E3o Cientifica e Tecnologica FCT/DAAD, 2019/2020. Baldur Schroeter acknowledges financial funding through the FMTHH 04FMTHH21 grant. Miguel P. Batista acknowledges FCT for the financial support through the 2020.05895.BD grant. Graphical abstract created with BioRender.com. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. Publisher Copyright: © 2024 The Authors. ChemPlusChem published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.
Collagen-based aerogels have great potential for topical biomedical applications. Collagen's natural affinity with skin, biodegradability, and gelling behavior are compelling properties to combine with the structural integrity of highly porous matrices in the dry form (aerogels). This work aimed to produce a novel collagen-based aerogel and to perform the material‘s solid-state and physicochemical characterization. Aerogels were obtained by performing different solvent exchange approaches of a collagen-gelled extract and drying the obtained alcogels with supercritical CO2. The resulting aerogels showed a sponge-like structure with a relatively dense mesoporous network with a specific surface area of 201–203 m2/g, a specific pore volume of 1.08–1.15 cm3/g, and a mean pore radius of ca. 14.7 nm. Physicochemical characterization confirmed that the obtained aerogels are composed of pure collagen, and the aerogel production process does not impact protein tertiary structure. Finally, the material swelling behavior was assessed at various pH values (4, 7, and 10). Collagen aerogels presented a high water uptake capacity up to ~2700 wt. %, pH-dependent stability, and swelling behavior in aqueous media. The results suggest that this collagen aerogel could be a promising scaffold candidate for topical biomedical applications.
