V. C Igbokwe et al. , Macromolecular Materials and Engineering, 2024, ⟨10.1002/mame.202400150⟩

Sucrose and glycerol have gained attention as additives for hydrogels, owing to their capacity to exert considerable influence over the physicochemical, mechanical, and biological characteristics of these materials. We thus explored these effects on agarose hydrogels (AHs). A series of AHs were synthesized using sucrose (30% and 300% w/v) and glycerol as additives. Sucrose enhances the hydration capacity of the hydrogels by up to 170%, whereas glycerol reduces it. Interestingly, sucrose and glycerol individually do not have bacteriostatic effects against Staphylococcus epidermidis , but their combination significantly ( p ≤ 0.001) inhibits the growth of both S. epidermidis and Pseudomonas aeruginosa by 63% and 29%, respectively, in comparison to native agarose. Cytotoxicity testing on NIH/3T3 murine fibroblasts revealed that sucrose increases cell viability up to 98%, while glycerol reduces it below 60%. Overall, these hydrogels hold promise for antibacterial biomedical applications as wound dressing materials and surface coatings for medical devices and can also be used to formulate bioinks for 3D bioprinting.