Poly(glycerol sebacate)\poly(butylene succinate-dilinoleate) blends as candidate materials for cardiac tissue engineering

Summary Poly (glycerol sebacate) (PGS) and poly (butylene succinate-dilinoleate) (PBS-DLA) are biodegradable polymers with potential application in cardiac tissue engineering. In the present study novel blends comprising PGS prepolymer and PBS-DLA were prepared with varying compositions (70/30, 60/40, 50/50, 40/60, 30/70 and 0/100 in weight percentage). The physical, chemical, and mechanical properties of the PGS/PBS-DLA blends were measured and compared. By adding PBS-DLA to PGS the need for curing PGS prepolymer was eliminated, as the blended films are chemically stable. With increasing amount of PBS-DLA the hydrophobicity of the blend system increased reaching values close to that of neat PBS-DLA films. Furthermore, addition of PBS-DLA significantly affected the mechanical properties of the blends, i.e. the elastic modulus of the blends was enhanced with increasing PBS-DLA addition from 1.2 MPa to 54 MPa. At the same time, PBS-DLA addition led to decreased degradation rate of the films. Furthermore the PBS-DLA counteracted the acidity of the free carboxylic groups on the free end chains of the PGS prepolymer. In vitro cytocompatibility studies indicated high biocompatibility. Taken together the results confirm that the novel PGS/PBS-DLA matrices exhibit promising characteristics as a biomaterial for application in cardiac regeneration approaches.