Polyphenol-Coordinated Supramolecular Hydrogel as a Promising “One-Stop-Shop” Strategy for Acute Infected Wound Treatment

Abstract

The management and treatment of acute infected wounds, which are characterized by bacterial infections and excessive amount of reactive oxygen species, remains a major challenge in clinic. Herein, a facile and universal approach for constructing polyphenol-coordinated supramolecular hydrogel is developed for acute infected wound treatment. The hydrogels are mainly crosslinked via two types of noncovalent bond associations, i.e., the intermolecular hydrogen bonding between polyphenols and poly-vinylpyrrolidone/basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) components, and the metal-phenolic hydroxyl coordination interactions. Taking tannic acid (TA) as a model polyphenol for biomedical application, TA-based hydrogel (TPFe or TPFe/bFGF hydrogel) is demonstrated to possess multifunctional features, including: 1) potent adhesive capacity for adhesion to the wounds or cementing two separated tissues together; 2) hemostatic property against rats’ tail cut, liver incision, and heart hole bleeding within a few minutes; 3) antioxidant ability for DPPH and ABTS radical scavenging activities; 4) antibacterial activity especially for Staphylococcus aureus; 5) accelerated endothelial cells migration/proliferation and angiogenesis, which are attributed to bFGF delivery from the hydrogel. In vitro/vivo experimental results show that TPFe hydrogel has excellent biocompatibility, and faster healing rates are observed in animal tests whether with a full-thickness skin defect model or a bacterial-infected wound model. Hence, our work reveals that such supramolecular hydrogel with multiple functions may be well adaptive to the different stages of wound repair process, and thus highlights its great prospect as a promising “One-Stop-Shop” strategy for acute infected wound treatment.