Antibacterial conductive self-healing hydrogel wound dressing with dual dynamic bonds promotes infected wound healing

Lipeng Qiao; Yongping Liang; Jueying Chen; Ying Huang; Saeed A Alsareii; Abdulrahman Manaa Alamri; Farid A Harraz; Baolin Guo

doi:10.1016/j.bioactmat.2023.07.015

Antibacterial conductive self-healing hydrogel wound dressing with dual dynamic bonds promotes infected wound healing

Bioact Mater. 2023 Jul 28:30:129-141. doi: 10.1016/j.bioactmat.2023.07.015. eCollection 2023 Dec.

Authors

Lipeng Qiao¹, Yongping Liang¹, Jueying Chen¹, Ying Huang¹, Saeed A Alsareii^{2

3}, Abdulrahman Manaa Alamri², Farid A Harraz³, Baolin Guo^{1

4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Shaanxi Province for Craniofacial Precision Medicine Research, College of Stomatology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049, China.
² Department of Surgery, College of Medicine, Najran University, Najran, 11001, Saudi Arabia.
³ Promising Centre for Sensors and Electronic Devices (PCSED), Advanced Materials and Nano-Research Centre, Najran University, Najran, 11001, Saudi Arabia.
⁴ Frontier Institute of Science and Technology, State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049, China.
⁵ Department of Orthopaedics, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710061, China.

Abstract

In clinical applications, there is a lack of wound dressings that combine efficient resistance to drug-resistant bacteria with good self-healing properties. In this study, a series of adhesive self-healing conductive antibacterial hydrogel dressings based on oxidized sodium alginate-grafted dopamine/carboxymethyl chitosan/Fe³⁺ (OSD/CMC/Fe hydrogel)/polydopamine-encapsulated poly(thiophene-3-acetic acid) (OSD/CMC/Fe/PA hydrogel) were prepared for the repair of infected wound. The Schiff base and Fe³⁺ coordination bonds of the hydrogel structure are dynamic bonds that can be repaired automatically after the hydrogel network is disrupted. Macroscopically, the hydrogel exhibits self-healing properties, allowing the hydrogel dressing to adapt to complex wound surfaces. The OSD/CMC/Fe/PA hydrogel showed good conductivity and photothermal antibacterial properties under near-infrared (NIR) light irradiation. In addition, the hydrogels exhibit tunable rheological properties, suitable mechanical properties, antioxidant properties, tissue adhesion properties and hemostatic properties. Furthermore, all hydrogel dressings improved wound healing in the infected full-thickness defect skin wound repair test in mice. The wound size repaired by OSD/CMC/Fe/PA3 hydrogel + NIR was much smaller (12%) than the control group treated with Tegaderm™ film after 14 days. In conclusion, the hydrogels have high antibacterial efficiency, suitable conductivity, great self-healing properties, good biocompatibility, hemostasis and antioxidant properties, making them promising candidates for wound healing dressings for the treatment of infected skin wounds.

Keywords: Dynamic crosslinking; Infected wound; Photothermal antibacterial; Self-healing; Wound healing.