Preparation and characterization of tissue-factor-loaded alginate: Toward a bioactive hemostatic material

Tissue factor (TF), an integral membrane protein, is by far the most potent known triggering agent of blood coagulation. Inspired by TF's effectiveness in initiating coagulation, this work aims to develop hemostatic materials with TF-integrated liposomes, which combined with alginate biopolymers are designed as composite pastes or hydrogels cross-linked with Ca2+. Fluorescence measurements revealed that the proteoliposomes were evenly distributed within alginate matrices, which also remained intact after release into simulated body fluid. The proteoliposome release rate from the composite pastes increased with the decrease of alginate concentration from 3% to 1%, or relative to the corresponding hydrogels. The latter also showed a swelling property. The combination with alginate enhanced TF procoagulant activity, and most importantly the resultant composites exhibited superior hemostatic performance, yielding a shortest blood clotting time of 1.5 min while untreated blood took 14.2 min to clot, with no cytotoxicity against mammalian cells.