Journal of Biomimetics Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering
Open Access

Research Article

Hemoglobin Loaded Alginate Particles

Alberto Dessy^*,#, Anna Maria Piras^# and Federica Chiellini

Laboratory of Bioactive Polymeric Materials for Biomedical and Environmental Applications (BIOlab), via Vecchia Livornese 1291, 56122, San Piero a Grado (Pi), UdR INSTM, Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

^#Equally contributed

Corresponding Author:

Alberto Dessy
Laboratory of Bioactive Polymeric Materials for
Biomedical and Environmental Applications (BIOlab)
via Vecchia Livornese 1291, 56122, San Piero a Grado (Pi)
UdR INSTM, Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry
University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
E-mail: albertodessy@virgilio.it

Anna Maria Piras
Laboratory of Bioactive Polymeric Materials for
Biomedical and Environmental Applications (BIOlab)
via Vecchia Livornese 1291, 56122, San Piero a Grado (Pi)
UdR INSTM, Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry
University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
E-mail: apiras@ns.dcci.unipi.it

Received date June 01, 2013; Accepted date July 07, 2013; Published date July 15, 2013

Citation: Dessy A, Piras AM, Chiellini F (2013) Hemoglobin Loaded Alginate Particles. J Biomim Biomater Tissue Eng 18:102. doi: 10.4172/1662-100X.1000102

Copyright: © 2013 Dessy A, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Over the last few years medical and pharmaceutical industries have shown an increasing interest in alginate, an anionic polysaccharide widely distributed in the cell walls of brown algae. The present work aims at loading Human Hemoglobin (Hb) into alginate particles; the modification of some formulation parameters was carefully investigated by analysing changes on particles size and protein physicochemical properties. Particles were prepared by dropping alginate into an aqueous solution containing Hb and CaCl2, which permits the formation of particles through ionic crosslinking. Hb loaded alginate beads were obtained possessing an average diameter of about 2 mm and a protein loading of about 5%. Physicochemical characterizations showed that the protein maintained its functional ability of reversibly binding oxygen and its quaternary structure once loaded into alginate beads. In a refinement of the first formulation trials, Hb loaded alginate microparticles with diameter around 150 μm were obtained with a protein loading of about 50%.

Keywords