AccScience Publishing / IJB / Volume 9 / Issue 5 / DOI: 10.18063/ijb.752
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Synthesis of biocompatible BSA-GMA and two-photon polymerization of 3D hydrogels with free radical type I photoinitiator

Teng Li1,3 Jie Liu1 Min Guo1,3 Fan-Chun Bin1,3 Jian-Yu Wang1,3 Atsushi Nakayama2 Wei-Cai Zhang1,3 Feng Jin1 Xian-Zi Dong1 Katsumasa Fujita2 Mei-Ling Zheng1*
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1 Laboratory of Organic NanoPhotonics and CAS Key Laboratory of Bio-Inspired Materials and Interfacial Science, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 29 Zhongguancun East Road, Beijing 100190, P. R. China
2 Department of Applied Physics, Osaka University, 2-1 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan
3 School of Future Technologies, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yanqihu Campus, Beijing 101407, P. R. China
Submitted: 30 December 2022 | Accepted: 21 March 2023 | Published: 12 May 2023
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fine-tuned Hydrogels for 3D Bioprinting)
© 2023 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

Although the development of three-dimensional (3D) printing technology is growing rapidly in the biomedical field, it remains a challenge to achieve arbitrary 3D structures with high resolution and high efficiency. Protein hydrogels fabricated by twophoton polymerization (TPP) have excellent mechanical properties, high precision, and 3D architecture. However, a large number of the amino acid group in bovine serum albumin (BSA) would be consumed when the protein-based hydrogels use dyes of free radical type II photoinitiators. In this study, we use glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) to modify BSA molecules to obtain a series of BSA-GMA materials, allowing the protein material to be two-photon polymerized with a water-soluble free radical type I photoinitiator. The precisely controllable 3D structure of the BSA-GMA hydrogel was fabricated by adjusting the concentration of the precursor solution, the degree of methacrylation, and the processing parameters of the TPP technique. Importantly, BSA-GMA materials are free of acidic hazardous substances. Meanwhile, the water-soluble initiator lithium phenyl (2,4,6-trimethylbenzoyl) phosphite (LAP) allows TPP on the vinyl group of the GMA chain and thus without consuming its amino acid group. The as-prepared BSA-GMA hydrogel structure exhibits excellent autofluorescence imaging, pH responsiveness, and biocompatibility, which would provide new avenues for potential applications in tissue engineering and biomedical fields to meet specific biological requirements.

Keywords
Two-photon polymerization
Bovine serum albumin
Hydroge
Free radical type I initiator
Biocompatible scaffold
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