Biological tissues such as skin, muscles, blood vessels, and cartilage exhibit innate self-healing characteristics with fast initial self-healing after injuries in order of seconds to avoid excessive loss of body fluids. The self-healing time-scale of most of the reported materials is much longer than that of blood vessels. Designing a self-healing polymer that could heal quickly under physiological conditions while offering suitable biodegradability and comparable mechanical strength as native tissues is a great challenge. Here, we designed bio-inspired ultrafast self-healing polymer by incorporation of high density quadruple of H-bonding UPY side-chains into degradable polyurethane for potential use in tissue engineering. The elastomers showed ultrafast self-healing efficiency within 1 min. Water leakage assessment through a thin film punctured with G20, G22 and G26 needle showed instantaneous stop of leakage at simulated human blood pressure (200 mmHg/cm). The supramolecular self-healing elastomers supported attachment, spreading and proliferation of endothelial cells (HUVECs) and smooth muscle cells (SMCs), indicating excellent platform-materials for construction of self-healing vascular grafts. The results suggested high-performance self-healing biodegradable materials for development of biomimetic tissue engineering constructs.

Bio-inspired autonomous self-healing elastomers for tissue engineering

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.