A high-toughness and high cell adhesion polyvinyl alcohol（PVA-hyaluronic acid (HA)-human-like collagen (HLC) composite hydrogel for cartilage repair

Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) has good mechanical stability and flexibility. However, PVA hydrogels of low compressive strength and low cell adhesion is still considered difficult to apply to tissue engineering cartilage. In this paper, we prepared PVA-HA-HLC hydrogel by freeze-thaw method. The results showed that the hydrogel had an average pore diameter of 100–300 μm, a porosity of 94.52%, a maximum compressive strain of 90%, and a compressive strength of 5.56 MPa. Animal cartilage defect test results showed that PVA-HA-HLC hydrogel repaired cartilage defects. In short, PVA-HA-HLC hydrogels could be used as cartilage repair scaffold.