Chronic nonhealing wounds are a growing socioeconomic problem that affects more than 6 million people annually solely in the United States. These wounds are colonized by bacteria that often develop into biofilms that act as a physical and chemical barrier to therapeutics and tissue oxygenation leading to chronic inflammation and tissue hypoxia. Although wound debridement and vigorous mechanical abrasion techniques are often used by clinical professionals to manage and remove biofilms from wound surfaces, such methods are highly nonselective and painful. In this study, we have developed a flexible polymer composite microneedle array that can overcome the physicochemical barriers (i.e., bacterial biofilm) present in chronic nonhealing wounds and codeliver oxygen and bactericidal agents. The polymeric microneedles are made by using a facile UV polymerization process of polyvinylpyrrolidone and calcium peroxide onto a flexible polyethylene terephthalate substrate for conformable attachment onto different locations of the human body surface. The microneedles effectively elevate the oxygen levels from 8 to 12 ppm once dissolved over the course of 2 h while also providing strong bactericidal effects on both liquid and biofilm bacteria cultures of both Gram-positive (Staphylococcus aureus) and Gram-negative (Pseudomonas aeruginosa) bacterial strains commonly found in dermal wounds. Furthermore, the results from the ex vivo assay on a porcine wound model indicated successful insertion of the microneedles into the tissue while also providing effective bactericidal properties against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative within the complex tissue matrix. Additionally, the microneedles demonstrate high levels of cytocompatibility with less than 10% of apoptosis throughout 6 days of continuous exposure to human dermal fibroblast cells. The demonstrated flexible microneedle array can provide a better approach for increasing the effectiveness of topical tissue oxygenation as well as the treatment of infected wounds with intrinsically antibiotic resistant biofilms.
Keywords: antibacterial; biofilms; calcium peroxide; drug delivery; flexible; microneedle patches.