Adhesive and biodegradable membranes made of sustainable catechol-functionalized marine collagen and chitosan

We describe bioadhesive membranes developed from marine renewable biomaterials, namely chitosan and collagen extracted from fish skins. Collagen was functionalized with catechol groups (Coll-Cat) to provide the membranes with superior adhesive properties in a wet environment and blended with chitosan to improve the mechanical properties. The blended membranes were compared to chitosan and chitosan blended with unmodified collagen in terms of surface morphology, wettability, weight loss, water uptake, mechanical and adhesive properties. The metabolic activity, the viability and the morphology of L929 fibroblastic cells seeded on these membranes were also assessed. Our results show that the functionalization with catechol groups improves the adhesive and mechanical properties of the membranes and enhances cell attachment and proliferation. These data suggest that the developed marine origin-raw membranes present a potential towards the restoration of the structural and functional properties of damaged soft tissues. ; The authors acknowledge the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the European program FEDER/FEEI for the financial support through projects PTDC/BTM-MAT/28123/2017 and PTDC/NAN-MAT/31036/2017. FCT is also acknowledged for the Ph.D. scholarship SFRH/BD/143209/2019 granted to Catia ´ Correia. This article has been prepared with the support of REMIX Project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation pro gramme under the Maria Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement n. 77