Preparation and Characterization of EDC/NHS Crosslinked Collagen Scaffold from the Scales of Cyprinus carpio (Common Carp)

Abstract Aquaculture is the fast-growing industry and, consequently, fish waste management is becoming a rising concern. Fish scale trash contains collagen as a biomaterial which offers excellent properties such as biocompatibility, biodegradability, porosity, low toxicity, cell adhesion and water absorption capacity which makes it suitable for biomedical research in the form of scaffolds. But the scaffolds have the limitation of having less stability. To overcome this shortcoming, collagen scaffolds can either be modified by chemical or physical treatments such as crosslinking with suitable polymers and dehydrothermal treatment, respectively. In the present study, extraction of fish collagen from the scales of Cyprinus carpio was performed followed by crosslinking with 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl) carbodiimide (EDC) & N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS). Comparative characterization was done by techniques such as ATR-FTIR, FESEM and TGA to analyse the chemical composition, surface morphology and thermal degradation of fish collagen scaffold (CS) with EDC/NHS crosslinked collagen scaffold (EDC/NHS-CS). Crosslinked collagen scaffold’s antimicrobial activity was also determined with agar well diffusion assay by using S. aureus strain of bacteria and cytotoxicity on mouse fibroblast cells (NIH/3T3) by MTT assay. Moreover, the biomedical industry wants to shift to sustainable approaches and fish collagen-based scaffolds may prove to be a potential source in tissue engineering. And thus, also help in the management of fish waste. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT