A porosity design of mycelium chitin-glucan scaffold via hydrothermal fabrication and its dual crosslinking for wound healing applications

Mycelium is a natural chitin-glucan fiber from fungi, which benefits for wound healing applications. In this study, Mycelium chitin-glucan (MCG) fibers were produced by submerged cultivation. The obtained mycelium exhibited twice biomass and completely homogeneous in chemical composition. These MCG threads were fabricated to scaffold using hydrothermal treatment, which constructed the individual fibers to be a rigid plate-liked structure. It impacted the rearrangement as well as increased the crystallinity phase in MCG matrix. The porosity design of scaffold can be manipulated by water-to-mycelium ratio. Crosslinking with tannic acid in water and ethanol increased the stability of MCG matrix but through different mechanisms as proved by molecular force field calculation. Tannic acid formed crosslinked via hydrogen bonding, which resulted in lower crystallinity, higher water retention, and good compressive modulus. On the other hand, ethanol caused the structural rearrangement of MCG matrix. Therefore, the crystallinity was higher but lower water retention. Cell proliferation on the MCG scaffold showed that cell growth was varied depending on the pore characteristic and mechanical property of the scaffold. The scaffold crosslinked with TA/EtOH achieved 13-fold increase in cell growth compared to the control.