Accelerating full-thickness skin wound healing using Zinc and Cobalt doped-bioactive glass-coated eggshell membrane

Abstract

The quest to develop advanced wound dressing with excellent healing properties is an unending clinical challenge. Several biological molecules have shown promising results in this regard. We utilized eggshell membrane, a waste product generated from egg processing industries, and coated it with bioactive glass/ion-doped (Zn, Co) bioactive glass in the nanoscale range to develop four different types of wound dressing mats (ESM/BAG, ESM/ZnBAG, ESM/CoBAG, ESM/ZnCoBAG). All the mats were cytocompatible with human dermal fibroblasts and maintained cytoskeletal and nuclear morphology up to day 14 of culture. On application of these mats over the full-thickness skin wounds in the rabbit model, enhanced wound closure was observed especially with the eggshell membrane/ion-doped bioactive glass mats. These mats also demonstrated orderly and timely deposition of ECM components i.e., collagen, elastin, and reticulin. These wound remodeling and early healing features could be attributed to the bioactive properties of eggshell membranes along with the Zinc and Cobalt doped bioactive glass. These mats thus hold enormous potential as an economic wound dressing and also in biomedical applications.