Exploration of silk-hyaluronic acid hydrogels crosslinked by the Fenton reaction

Herein, HRP-free silk-HA hybrid hydrogels are generated using the Fenton reaction. The findings reveal that a higher HA concentration, at an appropriate crosslinking density, increases the random coil content while decreasing the β-sheet content by reducing the interactions of Fe³⁺ ions with silk fibroin. This facilitates the formation of homogeneous hydrogel networks with enhanced optical transparency. The crosslinking strategies presented here offer a basis for the fabrication of hybrid hydrogel scaffolds based on proteins or polymers having phenolic hydroxyl moieties, without the use of HRP-catalyzed reactions, for a broad range of biomedical applications.