N-carboxyethyl chitosan fibers prepared as potential use in tissue engineering.

To improve the hydrophilicity of chitosan fiber, N-carboxyethyl chitosan fiber was prepared through Michael addition between chitosan fiber with acrylic acid. The structure was studied by (1)H NMR. The degree of N-substitution, measured via (1)H NMR, was easily varied from 0.10 to 0.51 by varying the molar ratio of acrylic acid to chitosan. Series of properties of N-carboxyethyl chitosan fiber including mechanical property, crystallinity, thermal property and in vitro degradation were investigated by Instron machine, X-ray diffraction and differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetric analysis, respectively. The results showed that, introducing the carboxyethyl group into the backbone chain of chitosan fiber destroyed the intra/intermolecular hydrogen bonding, leading to loss of the intra/intermolecular hydrogen bonding and improvement of hydrophilicity. Indirect cytotoxicity assessment of carboxyethyl chitosan fibers was investigated using a L929 cell line. And the obtained results clearly suggested that N-carboxyethyl chitosan fiber was nontoxic to L929 cells. The N-carboxyethyl chitosan fibers are potential as tissue engineering scaffolds.