Development and analysis of a novel collagen composite encapsulating a natural pharmic amino acid, dencichine

In this work, we have conducted a blend of type I collagen and dencichine under acid conditions, followed by investigating the intermolecular interactions between the two components. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), molecular modeling methods, the circular dichrorism (CD) measurement, and X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) studies inducate that the structure integrity of collagen is still maintained obviously after introducing dencichine. Furthermore, we also analyze the mechanism of the combination, which is just more than hydrogen bonding. Moreover, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) reveals that compared to pure collagen, dencichine could promote the thermalstability of collagen‐dencichine composite sponge (CDCS) with the increasing content of dencichine. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is utilized to determine the morphology changes of collagen by inducing dencichine. The fibril aggregation occurs due to the crosslinking with dencichine and the fibrous structure of collagen after inducing dencichine still remains compact and clear, which is the foundation of its biological activity. The present study, reveals that intermolecular interactions exist in the CDCS indeed, which is benefit for the development of new biological material and fabrication of novel functionalized hemostatic biomaterials. POLYM. COMPOS., 37:2027–2036, 2016. © 2015 Society of Plastics Engineers