Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have made a major breakthrough in the field of biomaterials - they have developed a new material composed of chitin, a natural polysaccharide abundant in nature. This new material, a chitin hydrogel, has the potential to be used as a scaffold for tissue engineering, drug delivery, and more. This is the first time that a material has been developed from chitin, which has traditionally been difficult to process and manipulate. The new hydrogel is composed of a chitin-based polymer that is highly elastic and can be formed into different shapes and sizes. The team from MIT has demonstrated that the hydrogel can be used to encapsulate drugs and cells, and has been shown to be biocompatible with human cells. This breakthrough opens up exciting new possibilities for the use of chitin in biomedical applications.

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source: Phys.org