Development of an All-Marine 3D Printed Bioactive Hydrogel Dressing for Treatment of Hard-to-Heal Wounds

Recent advances in bioactive wound dressings

Traditional wound dressings, despite their widespread use, face limitations, such as poor infection control and insufficient healing promotion. To address these challenges, bioactive materials have emerged as a promising solution in wound care. This comprehensive review explores the latest developments in wound healing technologies, starting with an overview of the importance of effective wound management, emphasising the need for advanced bioactive wound dressings. The review further explores various bioactive materials, defining their characteristics. It covers a wide range of natural and synthetic biopolymers used to develop bioactive wound dressings. Next, the paper discusses the incorporation of bioactive agents into wound dressings, including antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory agents, alongside regenerative components like growth factors, platelet-rich plasma, platelet-rich fibrin and stem cells. The review also covers fabrication techniques for bioactive wound dressings, highlighting techniques like electrospinning, which facilitated the production of nanofibre-based dressings with controlled porosity, the sol-gel method for developing bioactive glass-based dressings, and 3D bioprinting for customised, patient-specific dressings. The review concludes by addressing the challenges and future perspectives in bioactive wound dressing development. It includes regulatory considerations, clinical efficacy, patient care protocol integration and wound healing progress monitoring. Furthermore, the review considers emerging trends such as smart materials, sensors and personalised medicine approaches, offering insights into the future direction of bioactive wound dressing research.

A comprehensive review of the application of 3D-bioprinting in chronic wound management

INTRODUCTION

Chronic wounds require more sophisticated care than standard wound care because they are becoming more severe as a result of diseases like diabetes. By resolving shortcomings in existing methods, 3D-bioprinting offers a viable path toward personalized, mechanically strong, and cell-stimulating wound dressings.

AREAS COVERED

This review highlights the drawbacks of traditional approaches while navigating the difficulties of managing chronic wounds. The conversation revolves around employing natural biomaterials for customized dressings, with a particular emphasis on 3D-bioprinting. A thorough understanding of the uses of 3D-printed dressings in a range of chronic wound scenarios is provided by insights into recent research and patents.

EXPERT OPINION

The expert view recognizes wounds as a historical human ailment and emphasizes the growing difficulties and expenses related to wound treatment. The expert acknowledges that 3D printing is revolutionary, but also points out that it is still in its infancy and has the potential to enhance mass production rather than replace it. The review highlights the benefits of 3D printing for wound dressings by providing instances of smart materials that improve treatment results by stimulating angiogenesis, reducing pain, and targeting particular enzymes. The expert advises taking action to convert the technology's prospective advantages into real benefits for patients, even in the face of resistance to change in the healthcare industry. It is believed that the increasing evidence from in-vivo studies is promising and represents a positive change in the treatment of chronic wounds toward sophisticated 3D-printed dressings.

Clinical prediction of wound re-epithelisation outcomes in non-severe burn injury using the plasma lipidome

Whilst wound repair in severe burns has received substantial research attention, non-severe burns (<20 % total body surface area) remain relatively understudied, despite causing considerable physiological impact and constituting most of the hospital admissions for burns. Early prediction of healing outcomes would decrease financial and patient burden, and aid in preventing long-term complications from poor wound healing. Lipids have been implicated in inflammation and tissue repair and may play essential roles in burn wound healing. In this study, plasma samples were collected from 20 non-severe burn patients over six weeks from admission, including surgery, and analysed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to identify 850 lipids and 112 lipoproteins. Orthogonal projections to latent structures-discriminant analysis was performed to identify changes associated with re-epithelialisation and delayed re-epithelisation. We demonstrated that the lipid and lipoprotein profiles at admission could predict re-epithelisation outcomes at two weeks post-surgery, and that these discriminatory profiles were maintained up to six weeks post-surgery. Inflammatory markers GlycB and C-reactive protein indicated divergent systemic responses to the burn injury at admission. Triacylglycerols, diacylglycerols and low-density lipoprotein subfractions were associated with re-epithelisation (p-value <0.02, Cliff's delta >0.7), whilst high-density lipoprotein subfractions, phosphatidylinositols, phosphatidylcholines, and phosphatidylserines were associated with delayed wound closure at two weeks post-surgery (p-value <0.01, Cliff's delta <-0.7). Further model validation will potentially lead to personalised intervention strategies to reduce the risk of chronic complications post-burn injury.

Advances in Smart-Response Hydrogels for Skin Wound Repair

Hydrogels have emerged as promising candidates for biomedical applications, especially in the treatment of skin wounds, as a result of their unique structural properties, highly tunable physicochemical properties, and excellent biocompatibility. The integration of smart-response features into hydrogels allows for dynamic responses to different external or internal stimuli. Therefore, this paper reviews the design of different smart-responsive hydrogels for different microenvironments in the field of skin wound therapy. First, the unique microenvironments of three typical chronic difficult-to-heal wounds and the key mechanisms affecting wound healing therapeutic measures are outlined. Strategies for the construction of internal stimulus-responsive hydrogels (e.g., pH, ROS, enzymes, and glucose) and external stimulus-responsive hydrogels (e.g., temperature, light, electricity, and magnetic fields) are highlighted from the perspective of the wound microenvironment and the in vitro environment, and the constitutive relationships between material design, intelligent response, and wound healing are revealed. Finally, this paper discusses the severe challenges faced by smart-responsive hydrogels during skin wound repair and provides an outlook on the combination of smart-responsive hydrogels and artificial intelligence to give scientific direction for creating and using hydrogel dressings that respond to stimuli in the clinic.

Stimuli-Responsive 3D Printable Conductive Hydrogel: A Step toward Regulating Macrophage Polarization and Wound Healing

Conductive hydrogels (CHs) are promising alternatives for electrical stimulation of cells and tissues in biomedical engineering. Wound healing and immunomodulation are complex processes that involve multiple cell types and signaling pathways. 3D printable conductive hydrogels have emerged as an innovative approach to promote wound healing and modulate immune responses. CHs can facilitate electrical and mechanical stimuli, which can be beneficial for altering cellular metabolism and enhancing the efficiency of the delivery of therapeutic molecules. This review summarizes the recent advances in 3D printable conductive hydrogels for wound healing and their effect on macrophage polarization. This report also discusses the properties of various conductive materials that can be used to fabricate hydrogels to stimulate immune responses. Furthermore, this review highlights the challenges and limitations of using 3D printable CHs for future material discovery. Overall, 3D printable conductive hydrogels hold excellent potential for accelerating wound healing and immune responses, which can lead to the development of new therapeutic strategies for skin and immune-related diseases.

Synergistic and Long-Lasting Wound Dressings Promote Multidrug-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus-Infected Wound Healing

Background

Multidrug-resistant staphylococcus aureus infected wounds can lead to nonhealing, systemic infections, and even death. Although advanced dressings are effective in protecting, disinfecting, and maintaining moist microenvironments, they often have limitations such as single functionality, inadequate drug release, poor biosafety, or high rates of drug resistance.

Methods

Here, a novel wound dressing comprising glycyrrhizic acid (GA) and tryptophan-sorbitol carbon quantum dots (WS-CQDs) was developed, which exhibit synergistic and long-lasting antibacterial and anti-inflammatory effects. We investigated the characterization, mechanical properties, synergistic antibacterial effects, sustained-release properties, and cytotoxicity of GA/WS-CQDs hydrogels in vitro. Additionally, we performed transcriptome sequence analysis to elucidate the antibacterial mechanism. Furthermore, we evaluated the biosafety, anti-inflammatory effects, and wound healing ability of GA/WS-CQDs dressings using an in vivo mouse model of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)-infected wounds.

Results

The prepared GA/WS-CQDs hydrogels demonstrated superior anti-MRSA effects compared to common antibiotics in vitro. Furthermore, the sustained release of WS-CQDs from GA/WS-CQDs hydrogels lasted for up to 60 h, with a cumulative release of exceeding 90%. The sustained-released WS-CQDs exhibited excellent anti-MRSA effects, with low drug resistance attributed to DNA damage and inhibition of bacterial biofilm formation. Notably, in vivo experiments showed that GA/WS-CQDs dressings reduced the expression of inflammatory factors (TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-6) and significantly promoted the healing of MRSA-infected wounds with almost no systemic toxicity. Importantly, the dressings did not require replacement during the treatment process.

Conclusion

These findings emphasize the high suitability of GA/WS-CQDs dressings for MRSA-infected wound healing and their potential for clinical translation.