Novel scalable silicone elastomer and poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (PHEMA) composite materials for tissue engineering and drug delivery applications
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In recent years hydrogels have received increasing attention as potential materials for applications in regenerative medicine. They can be used for scaffold materials providing structural integrity to tissue constructs, for controlled delivery of drugs and proteins to cell and tissues, and for support materials in tissue growth. However, the real challenge is to obtain sufficiently good mechanical properties of the hydrogel. The present study shows the combination of two normally non-compatible materials, silicone elastomer and poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (PHEMA), into a novel composite material with increased hydrophilicity in regard to virgin silicone elastomer, making it suitable as a scaffold for tissue engineering and with the concomitant possibility for delivering drug from the scaffold to the tissue. Interpenetrating polymer networks (IPNs) of silicone elastomer and PHEMA was produced using supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2) as the swelling agent. By removing the scCO2 an IPN of hydrogel and silicone elastomer was obtained, capable of absorbing water just like a traditional hydrogel, but with remarkably increased mechanical properties. The biocompatibility of the IPN composite material was investigated using live/dead staining of hepatocytes (HepG2) growing on the polymer, showing excellent viability compared to the control polystyrene. Combinations of different types of silicone elastomers and different percentages of hydrogel were also investigated. Finally, the model drug doxycycline (a tetracycline analogue) was loaded into the hydrogel of the IPN, and the release of the doxycycline was studied using a doxycycline regulated green fluorescent reporter gene expression assay: HeLa cells grown on the IPN composite material, previously loaded with doxycycline, were transfected with the pTRE-Tight-BI-DsRed-Express plasmid, consisting of a bidirectional tetracycline sensitive promoter. The transfected HeLa cells, expressing the Tet-On transactivator, responded nicely to the release of doxycycline from the IPN composite material by the expression of green fluorescent protein. This demonstrates the potential for combined scaffold and controlled drug delivery material.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".