Preparation and properties of composite agarose/collagen hydrogel

Aiming at the poor mechanical property and formability of hydrogels, agarose is incorporated with collagen to prepare a composite hydrogel with good biological, mechanical and structural properties. The blending methods of agarose and collagen solutions are investigated, and the composite hydrogel solutions with same collagen content and different agarose contents are finally prepared. The comprehensive properties of the resultant hydrogels derived from different composite solutions are evaluated and compared with collagen hydrogel. The results indicate that with the increase of agarose content, the mechanical property and microstructure replication property of the composite hydrogels are gradually improved while the biological property decreases. The hydrogel with 0.003 g/mL collagen and 0.004 g/mL agarose is chosen as the optimal agarose/collagen composition. In-vivo implantation experiment verifies that such agarose/collagen composite hydrogel effectively weakens material degradation and simultaneously induce moderate rejection response. This agarose/collagen hydrogel is expected to be used for fabrication of organ scaffolds with biomimetic vascular system.