Increasing the repeating units of ethylene glycol‐based dimethacrylates directed toward reduced oxidative stress and co‐stimulatory factors expression in human monocytic cells

Abstract The ethylene glycol‐based dimethacrylates are commonly used in biomaterials and dental restorative materials as a cross‐linking agent. In this study, toxic effect of triethylene glycol dimethacrylate (TEGDMA) and poly(ethylene glycol) dimethacrylates (PEG‐DMAs) with various ethylene glycol repeating units was investigated in terms of cytotoxicity, oxidative stress, and the expression of co‐stimulatory factors in human leukemia cell line (THP‐1 cells) to verify the effect of ethylene glycol repeating units. Note that the 1‐octanol/water partition coefficient of PEG‐based dimethacrylates decreased with increasing the ethylene glycol repeating units, indicating that the hydrophilicity of PEG‐DMAs increased with ethylene glycol repeating units. The toxic effect of PEG‐DMAs such as cytotoxicity, oxidative stress, and the expression of CD86 in treated THP‐1 cells are reduced with increasing the ethylene glycol repeating units in PEG‐DMAs. However, the expression of CD54 in treated THP‐1 cells was not influenced with the ethylene glycol repeating units and the maximal expression level of CD54 was observed at the concentration range of 2–4 mM for all samples. Accordingly, hydrophilic character of PEG‐DMAs with long ethylene glycol chains definitely alleviates the some toxic aspect of PEG‐based DMAs. This finding would provide important insight into the design of new biomaterials and dental materials with superior biocompatibility. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A: 103A: 1060–1066, 2015.