Soft Matter Composites Interfacing with Biomolecules, Cells, and Tissues - Bioinspired Approaches for Human-Centric Technologies - page 44

Fig. 2.6 (a) Photograph of alginate hydrogels. (b) Cryo-scanning electron microscopy image of
alginate hydrogel (Lee et al. 2013 )
Fig. 2.7 Chemical structure of alginic acid polymer
Fig. 2.8 Cross-linking of alginic acid with calcium or magnesium ions (Fonseca et al. 2014 )
chemical cross-linking procedures is the fact that they are irreversible and can
contain chemical traces that can hinder wound healing. Recent works demonstrated
that cross-linking via disulfide bond formation by oxidation of thiolated compounds
could offer a solution for this problem, since this process is reversible. Cleavage of
the disulfide linkages via reducing agents (e.g., dithiothreitol) results in thiolated,
soluble macromolecules. The mechanical properties of thiolated gelatin hydrogels
as depicted in Fig. 2.9 depend on the contributions of both the physical