Abstract
There is a great demand for the development of novel wound dressings to overcome the time and costs of wound care performed by a vast number of clinicians, especially in the current overburdened healthcare systems. In this study, Cyanoflan, a biopolymer secreted by a marine unicellular cyanobacterium, was evaluated as a potential biomaterial for wound healing. Cyanoflan effects on cell viability, apoptosis, and migration were assessed in vitro, while the effect on tissue regeneration and biosafety was evaluated in healthy Wistar rats. The cell viability and apoptosis of fibroblasts and endothelial cells was not influenced by the treatment with different concentrations of Cyanoflan, as observed by flow cytometry. Moreover, the presence of Cyanoflan did not affect cell motility and migratory capacity, nor did it induce reactive oxygen species production, even revealing an antioxidant behavior regarding the endothelial cells. Furthermore, the skin wound healing in vivo assay demonstrated that Cyanoflan perfectly adapted to the wound bed without inducing systemic or local oxidative or inflammatory reaction. Altogether, these results suggest that Cyanoflan is a promising biopolymer for the development of innovative applications to overcome the many challenges that still exist in skin wound healing.
Highlights
Wound healing is a complex and highly regulated process that is critical to restore the barrier function of the skin
As the skin wounds are exposed to potential toxic and infectious environments, it is important to ensure that the materials used in wound dressings production would not exacerbate the healing process, being themselves toxic [11]
To evaluate the potential cytotoxic activity of the biopolymer Cyanoflan, flow cytometry analysis with Propidium Iodide/Annexin V double staining was performed in human dermal fibroblasts (HDF) and human microvascular endothelial cells (HMEC-1)
Summary
Wound healing is a complex and highly regulated process that is critical to restore the barrier function of the skin. The native properties and diverse composition of biopolymers allow them to be tunable into hydrogels or scaffolds and combined with drugs or other polymers, as well as to absorb large volumes of water when in dry state and donate water when hydrated [5]. These biopolymers are usually repeated units of polysaccharides or peptides, and the mostly used are collagen, cellulose, chitosan, alginate, hyaluronan, fucoidan and carrageenan [4]. Despite their promising features, such as anionic nature and intrinsic bioactivity, the polysaccharidic biopolymers produced by cyanobacteria and microalgae are still unexplored natural resources in wound healing
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