A Sequential Therapeutic Hydrogel With Injectability and Antibacterial Activity for Deep Burn Wounds' Cleaning and Healing.

Sizhen Wang,Feng Yang,Beibei Guo,Zhiqiang Ma,Ying Huang,Lei Hou,Jie Li,Linhong Sun,Yunchang Zhang

doi:10.3389/fbioe.2021.794769

Abstract

As a severe clinical challenge, escharotomy and infection are always the core concerns of deep burn injuries. However, a usual dressing without multifunctionality leads to intractable treatment on deep burn wounds. Herein, we fabricated a sequential therapeutic hydrogel to solve this problem. Cross-linked by modified polyvinyl alcohol (PVA-SH/ε-PL) and benzaldehyde-terminated F127 triblock copolymers (PF127-CHO), the hydrogel demonstrated excellent mechanical properties, injectability, tissue adhesiveness, antibacterial activity, biocompatibility, and satisfactory wound cleaning through both in vitro and in vivo assays. Additionally, based on the conception of “sequential therapy,” we proposed for the first time to load bromelain and EGF into the same hydrogel in stages for wound cleaning and healing. This work provides a strategy to fabricate a promising wound dressing for the treatment of deep burn wounds with injectability and improved patients’ compliance as it simplified the process of treatment due to its “three in one” characteristic (antibacterial activity, wound cleaning, and healing effects); therefore, it has great potential in wound dressing development and clinical application.

Highlights

Burn injury is a major cause of trauma in both civilian and military environments (Yaacobi et al, 2021)
The preparation routes of PF127-CHO/ε-PL, Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)-SH, and PLC hydrogel are shown in Supplementary Figure S1, and the morphology of hydrogel is shown in Supplementary Figure S2
For FT-IR, the wavenumbers of 1,692.29 and 843.56 cm−1 belonged to the vibration of aldehyde groups on PF127-CHO; the wavenumbers of 3,069.14, 2,930.60, 1,671.43, and 1,319.79 cm−1 were affiliated to the vibration of carboxyl groups on PVA-SH/ε-PL; and the wavenumbers of 1,679.60 and 1,510.87 cm−1 belonged to amido groups on PLC, demonstrating the successful synthesis of PLC (Supplementary Figure S4)

Summary

Introduction

Burn injury is a major cause of trauma in both civilian and military environments (Yaacobi et al, 2021). Bromelain and EGF in PLC hydrogel showed slight sudden release of 22.38 and 23.07% at 1 h, respectively.

Results

Conclusion