Synthesis and Characterization of Polyhydroxyalkanoate Organo/Hydrogels.

Synthetic organogels/hydrogels are attracting growing interests due to their potential applications in biomedical fields, organic electronics, and photovoltaics. Photogelation methods for synthesis of organogels/hydrogels have been shown particularly promising because of the high efficiency and simple synthetic procedures. This study synthesized new biodegradable polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA)-based organogels/hydrogels via UV photo-cross-linking using unsaturated PHA copolymer poly[(R)-3-hydroxyundecanoate-co-(R)-3-hydroxy-10-undecenoate] (PHU10U) with polyethylene glycol dithiol (PDT) as a photo-cross-linker. The PHU10U was synthesized by an engineered Pseudomonas entomophila and characterized via Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and 13C NMR. With decreasing the molar ratio of PHU10U to PDT, both the swelling ratio and pore size were decreased. Meanwhile, increasing densities of the gel networks resulted in a higher compressive modulus. Cell cytotoxicity studies based on the CCK-8 assay on both the PHU10U precursor and PHU10U/PDT hydrogels showed that the novel PHA-based biodegradables acting as hydrogels possess good biocompatibility.