Development of chitosan towards the self-healing and mechanically stronger biocompatible hydrogel

Abstract

Nontoxic, self-healing and biocompatible Chitosan grafted poly (maleic anhydride) based hydrogel (CSHG) have been developed by using Chitosan (CS) and maleic anhydride (MAH) having reasonable mechanical strength with biocompatibility. The self-healing arises due to the presence of free primary amine group and carboxyl group in grafted chitosan either dynamic imine covalent interaction or non-covalent (H-bonding) interactions. In addition to this, the hydrogel showed tremendous swelling at various pH values viz. - 2, 7 and 9, and morphological study reveals the porous nature of the synthesized CSHG hydrogel. The cell viability (MTT) of CS and CSHG was performed on MCF-7 (breast cancer cell line), and phase contrast (cell imaging) of CS and CSHG was taken at 1:5, 1:10, 1:50 and 1:100 ratios in both cases which do not induce any significant changes in cellular morphology thus makes it biocompatible and can be used as biological applications. © 2022 Indian Chemical Society