Conjugates of modified hyaluronic acid with amino compounds for biomedical applications.

Hyaluronic acid (HA) modified with an aldehyde group (HA-CHO) has enormous potential for the covalent attachment of the amino compounds and for the crosslinking of HA with bis or multi-functional amino linkers under physiological conditions. Modification of HA-CHO to its α,β-unsaturated analogue (ΔHA-CHO) generally increases the stability of the reversible imino-attachment due to conjugation of the imine moiety with the adjacent CC double bound. Conjugation of a wide range of structurally different amines including the amines with enhanced biological activity were studied in detail.