Synthesis and characterization of highly porous polyvinyl alcohol hydrogels crosslinked in different ways

Polyvinylalc. (PVA) is a water sol. synthetic polymer already used in areas such as food chem., pharmaceuticals, medicine and biotechnol. Applications of PVA hydrogels in the biomedical field include contact lenses, wound dressing, coatings for sutures and catheters and as scaffolds for long-term culture of hepatocytes and mesenchimal stem cell. Despite its excellent properties as a film forming and component of gels and scaffolds no attempts other than freeze-drying have been pursued to develop alternative methods for the creation of scaffolds suitable for tissue engineering applications. Here we propose an alternative and novel method based on gas foaming for the prepn. of PVA scaffolds endowed with good mech. properties.