Comparative study of kerateine and keratose based composite nanofibers for biomedical applications

•KR and KO based electrospun nanofibers were fabricated with PU.•KR got higher tensile modulus, lower fracture strain, slower degradation rate.•KO got stronger hydrophilic property and higher water uptake ability.•KR and KO can obviously improve the cytocompatibility of PU.

In this work, two forms of keratins, kerateine (KR) and keratose (KO), were fabricated respectively into electrospun nanofibers by combination with polyurethane (PU). The differences of the structure and material properties between KR and KO based fibers were investigated by SEM observation, ATR-FTIR, XRD, contact angle, tensile test, in vitro degradation and cytocompatibility assay. The results indicated that the KR based nanofibers exhibited a higher tensile modulus, lower fracture strain and slower degradation rate, mainly due to the reformation of disulfide crosslinking between the regenerated cysteines in KR after the reductive extraction. The KO based nanofibers demonstrated a stronger hydrophilic property and higher water uptake ability due to the cysteic acid residues resulting from the oxidative extraction. Furthermore, the combination of keratins, regardless of KR or KO, could obviously improve the cytocompatibility of PU, especially in the cell attachment stage.

Graphical abstractDownload high-res image (312KB)Download full-size image