TY - JOUR TI - Grafting of aspirin on to gelatin for anti-inflammatory effect in scaffold development DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-y8v1-em26 PY - 2019 AB - In recent times, there is an increasing interest in the field of tissue engineering for biochemical or biomedical use. A core component of tissue engineering is the scaffolds used for controlling cell growth. These scaffolds are made of a plethora of materials, each with their own distinct properties, which can be further modified by the addition of secondary substances like drug molecules. Gelatin is a commonly used biomaterial for the formation of gel scaffolds. However, due to its water solubility, there have been issues trying to graft water-insoluble materials on to it. In this work, we try to graft aspirin, a water-insoluble drug molecule, to gelatin and characterize the properties of the resultant product. The grafting of the gelatin and aspirin was performed through amidation with dicyclocarbodiimide (DCC) and N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS) as intermediate coupling agent. During this process, experiments were conducted to find appropriate solvents for a homogenous reaction. The resultant product was purified utilizing multiple filtration passes, dialysis, and lyophilization. After production of the aspirin-grafted-gelatin (AGG), it was characterized and tested for its gelling and anti-inflammatory effect. The below-mentioned tests were conducted to characterize the product and confirm the expected results. Free amine detection using fluorescamine assay was conducted to detect the presence of a secondary material which may have replaced the free amines in gelatin. It was assumed that these amines were consumed in amidation with aspirin. FTIR spectroscopy was used to determine the characteristics of the materials within the AGG. This was performed by comparing the troughs of AGG wave numbers with the troughs of gelatin and aspirin at the same wave numbers. To determine the gel scaffolding capability of AGG, gelling test of AGG was conducted. Finally, to test whether AGG has retained aspirin’s anti-inflammatory properties, cell testing using RAW 264.7 macrophages was conducted. Enzymatic breakdown test using trypsin was also run on AGG to calculate its breakdown rate as compared to gelatin. KW - Chemical and Biochemical Engineering KW - Tissue scaffolds KW - Gelatin KW - Aspirin LA - English ER -