Hydrogels are largely applied in many fields, from thickeners, to drug encapsulation, wound healing, etc. The latter field is looked at with interest for wound healing because their application on a wound is not intrusive and unpleasant, as often found when polymeric scaffolds are used. If synthetic (PAA, PEO, etc.) and natural macromolecules (chitosan, collagen, etc.) have been long used, the most recent trends in this field look towards stimuli-responsive gels based on polymers and self-assembled compounds, including synthetic amphiphilic peptides and sugar-based lipids. Microbial glycolipid, the gelling conditions of which in water have never been described, have a great potential in this field; in fact, microbial glycolipid are obtained from renewable resources, they are biocompatible, non-cytotoxic and they exhibit astonishing self-assembly properties in water. This contribution discusses the self-assembly properties of selected microbial glycolipids and their hydrogel-forming properties. The self-assembly will be shown via SAXS and cryo-TEM experiments, while the gelling properties will be analyzed using time, temperature and pH-resolved rheology experiments. Hydrogels are largely applied in many fields, from thickeners, to drug encapsulation, wound healing, etc. The latter field is looked at with interest for wound healing because their application on a wound is not intrusive and unpleasant, as often found when polymeric scaffolds are used. If synthetic (PAA, PEO, etc.) and natural macromolecules (chitosan, collagen, etc.) have been long used, the most recent trends in this field look towards stimuli-responsive gels based on polymers and self-assembled compounds, including synthetic amphiphilic peptides and sugar-based lipids. Microbial glycolipid, the gelling conditions of which in water have never been described, have a great potential in this field; in fact, microbial glycolipid are obtained from renewable resources, they are biocompatible, non-cytotoxic and they exhibit astonishing self-assembly properties in water. This contribution discusses the self-assembly properties of selected microbial glycolipids and their hydrogel-forming properties. The self-assembly will be shown via SAXS and cryo-TEM experiments, while the gelling properties will be analyzed using time, temperature and pH-resolved rheology experiments.

Hydrogels from self-assembled microbial glycolipids

255th National Meeting (2018)

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