Abstract
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•Hyaluronic acid (HA) was chemically modified through incorporation of cinnamate units.•The resulted bio-polymer was entirely investigated using advanced instrumental techniques.•Photo-induced crosslinking was performed by UV irradiation.•The obtained photo-responsive bio-polymer was employed in entrapment of horseradish peroxidase (HRP) enzyme.•The activity of the immobilized enzymes was studied under different conditions and compared to that of the native enzyme.
In this work, a photo-responsive hydrogel membrane based on cinnamate-modified hyaluronic acid (HA-CM) was developed and safely cross-linked under UV light curing. The obtained material was effectively utilized for immobilization of horseradish peroxidase (HRP) enzyme via encapsulation and entrapment strategy with efficiency above 95%. The prepared HA-CM biopolymer was investigated before the UV curing using instrumental and spectral techniques including Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). During the UV irradiation, the progress of the cross-linking reaction was monitored by the UV–vis light spectroscopy. In addition, when the photo-induced cross-linking had accomplished, the morphological appearance of the hydrogel membrane was recorded using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). The HRP immobilized in HA-CM membranes displayed remarkable stability against the environmental pH changes especially under alkaline media and shift the optimum pH to 8 compared to the free HRP, which exhibited the highest activity at pH 7. Also, the entrapped enzyme was able to preserve above 85% of its catalytic activity at higher temperature values where the free enzyme had deactivated by approximately 50%. Moreover, HA-CM-HRP maintained 87% of its activity after 10 sequential reuse cycles, which indicate the economic value of the employed immobilization strategy.