Electro-Responsive Conductive Blended Hydrogel Patch

Jang Ho Ha; Jae Hyun Lim; Jong Min Lee; Bong Geun Chung

doi:10.3390/polym15122608

Electro-Responsive Conductive Blended Hydrogel Patch

Polymers (Basel). 2023 Jun 8;15(12):2608. doi: 10.3390/polym15122608.

Authors

Jang Ho Ha¹, Jae Hyun Lim², Jong Min Lee³, Bong Geun Chung^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sogang University, Seoul 04107, Republic of Korea.
² Research Center, Sogang University, Seoul 04107, Republic of Korea.
³ Division of Chemical Industry, Yeungnam University College, Daegu 42415, Republic of Korea.
⁴ Institute of Smart Biosensor, Sogang University, Seoul 04107, Republic of Korea.

Abstract

The proposed electro-responsive hydrogel has great benefit for transdermal drug delivery system (TDDS) applications. To improve the physical or chemical properties of hydrogels, a number of researchers have previously studied the mixing efficiencies of the blended hydrogels. However, few studies have focused on improving the electrical conductivity and drug delivery of the hydrogels. We developed a conductive blended hydrogel by mixing alginate with gelatin methacrylate (GelMA) and silver nanowire (AgNW). We demonstrated that and the tensile strength of blended hydrogels were increased by a factor of 1.8 by blending GelMA and the electrical conductivity was enhanced by a factor of 18 by the addition of AgNW. Furthermore, the GelMA-alginate-AgNW (Gel-Alg-AgNW) blended hydrogel patch enabled on-off controllable drug release, indicating 57% doxorubicin release in response to electrical stimulation (ES) application. Therefore, this electro-responsive blended hydrogel patch could be useful for smart drug delivery applications.

Keywords: alginate; drug release; electro-responsive blended hydrogel; gelatin methacrylate; silver nanowire.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (Grant number 2022R1A2C2003724, 2015M3D3A1A01064926, 2022R1F1A1059611). This work was also supported by the Nanomedical Devices Development Project of the National Nano Fab Center (Grant number CSM2105M101), Korea. This research was supported by the Korean Fund for Regenerative Medicine funded by Ministry of Science and ICT, and the Ministry of Health and Welfare (Grant number RS-2022-00070316), Republic of Korea.