Preparation and characterization of chitosan/PEG/gelatin composites for tissue engineering

Chitosan scaffolds have gained much attention in tissue engineering. However, brittleness and low biodegradability limit scaffolds application, especially in use as guided tissue regeneration membranes (GTRm) in surgical operations. The first objective of this work is to improve the brittleness of the chitosan membrane, which is not desired for use via adding polyethylene glycol (PEG) to chitosan, and the second objective is to accelerate the degradation rate by blending gelatin with the binary chitosan‐PEG mixture. The addition of PEG softened the blend membrane in vision and in touch. The tensile compliant increased from 7.87 × 10^?3 (MPa^?1) for chitosan membrane to 3.63 × 10^?1 (MPa^?1) for chitosan‐PEG‐gelatin (CPG) membrane. Degradation results in vitro indicated that CPG membrane degraded faster and weight loss increased more significantly than chitosan membrane and the lowest tensile strength of CPG membrane could meet the requirement of the application. CPG membrane showed significant improvement in degradation and flexibility in comparison with the chitosan membrane. Cell adhesion, viability, and proliferation onto the external surface of CPG membrane with C2C12 cell had been evaluated in vitro and quantified by a methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium (MTT) reduction assay. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2009