Dual-functionalized hyaluronic acid as a facile modifier to prepare polyanionic collagen.

Hyaluronic acid (HA) is a natural polysaccharide possesses outstanding physiological activities. In this work, HA was activated as a novel collagen modifier via the esterification reaction between N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS) and the carboxyl groups of HA. Both of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and 1H- nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra indicated the successful synthesis of HA-NHS esters. As reflected by FTIR, circular dichroism (CD) and sodium dodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE), collagens modified with HA-NHS ester maintained its intact triplex structure with larger molecular weight. The resultant polyanionic collagen displayed an excellent dissolubility in the neutral water to form a clear solution, due to the significantly lower isoelectric point values (3.8-4.4) compared with that of the native collagen (7.1). In addition, the thermal transition temperature of collagen was significantly increased (16 °C) after modifying with HA-NHS esters. Both of the aggregation morphology and rheological property exhibited high dependence on the NHS/COOH ratio of HA-NHS esters, as reflected by field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and rheological test, respectively. The present study offered a novel dual-functional modifier based on the design of HA-NHS ester to obtain water-soluble collagen with desired thermal stability and rheological property, which will significantly widen the application range of collagen, especially in the fields of injectable biodegradable materials and cosmetics.