Tyramine-enhanced zwitterion hyaluronan hydrogel coating for anti-fouling and anti-thrombosis

Zwitterions have aroused much interest to endow implantable medical devices with anti-fouling and anti-thrombosis performance, due to their ability to form a hydrated layer that can provide a good barrier against protein and cell adhesion. Herein, tyramine modified sulfobetaine-derived sodium hyaluronan (HST) hydrogel coating was fabricated, in which hyaluronan (HA) was used as polysaccharide skeleton to graft zwitterionic sulfobetaine, and tyramine was introduced as crosslinker to construct both the network of hydrogel and a strong covalent bond between coating and substrate. Hydrogel coating was prepared by spin coating or painting HST prepolymer solution under ultraviolet light irradiation. The obtained HST hydrogel coating shows good stability. Moreover, in addition to its outstanding anti-fouling performance and good biocompatibility, it can effectively prevent thrombosis in blood circulation ex vivo. This work offers a universal strategy to prepare a high-performance anti-fouling and anti-thrombosis coating, which is expected to promote the development of functional coatings for biomedical materials.