In vitro enzymatic degradation of a biological tissue fixed by alginate dialdehyde

Biological tissues must be chemically fixed before they can be implanted in humans as tissue engineering scaffolds. To provide an ideal tissue engineering scaffold material, which is biodegradable and cytocompatible, a novel crosslinking agent, alginate dialdehyde (ADA), was employed to fix biological tissues by our group. The study mainly investigated the enzymatic degradation of ADA fixed biological tissues in vitro. Glutaraldehyde, the most commonly used crosslinking agent for biological tissue fixation, was employed as a control. The results suggested that, the ADA fixation could enhance the resistance against enzymatic degradation of biological tissues effectively. Meanwhile, compared to glutaraldehyde-fixed tissues, the ADA-fixed tissues could also degrade gradually over time. Moreover, the ADA crosslinking reagent itself had a stimulatory effect on cell proliferation when at an appropriate concentration. The results obtained in this study demonstrate that ADA fixation might provide a successful example of the biodegradable scaffold materials in tissue engineering.