Preparation and characterization of fibroin hydrogels for potential application in photodynamic therapy

The research in to natural materials has notably increased in recent years due to the opportunity of combining biocompatibility with exceptional physical, mechanical, and chemical properties, which would be arduous to obtain following a synthetic route. Among these natural polymers, silk fibroin is attractive because of its optical transparency, outstanding mechanical robustness and compatibility with living systems, with the formation of non-inflammatory degradation products. In this study, we were capable to form translucid hydrogels from raw silk fibers at different concentrations and used them as matrix to incorporate a photosensitive molecule - sodium (4,4',4''-(20-(4-(3-carboxypropanamido) phenyl) porphyrin-5,10,15-triyl) tribenzenesulfonate - for future use in photodynamic therapy. The obtained hydrogels were characterized by different rheology techniques and spectrophotometry analysis to study the factors that are involved in the formation of the hydrogel, and to have information about silk fibroin (SF) properties after adding the porphyrin molecule to the matrix. The set of obtained results showed that the SF hydrogels have a shear thinning behavior, where the viscosity of the gel decrease whit the increase of the shear rate, and that it can be classified as thixotropic materials. This mean that the structure of the material needs time to recover after experience shear deformation. Also, we observed that the secondary structure of the fibroin is not affected by the addition of porphyrin in any concentration, it was confirmed by the negative Cotton signal around 220 nm in the circular dichroism spectra. The hybrid porphyrin-fibroin nanofibers were capable to generate singlet oxygen after gelification, and we proved that silk fibroin hydrogels are an excellent matrix to encapsulate other molecules to application in photodynamic therapy and photothermal therapy, leading to the formation of selfassembled peptide nanostructures with controllable phototherapeutic effects.