Acute
wounds subject to frequent deformations are difficult to
be treated because the healing process was easily interfered by external
mechanical forces. Traditional wound dressings have limited efficacy
because of their poor mechanical properties and skin adhesiveness
and difficulty in the delivery of therapeutic drugs effectively. As
such, tough and skin-adhesive wound dressings with sustainable and
stimuli-responsive drug release properties for treatment of those
wounds are highly desirable. For this purpose, we have developed a
mechano-responsive poly(sulfobetaine methacrylate) hydrogel which
aims to control the delivery of antibiotic drug upon application of
mechanical forces. Diacrylated Pluronic F127 micelles were used as
a macro-cross-linker of the hydrogel and loaded with hydrophobic antimicrobial
drugs. The micelle-cross-linked hydrogel has excellent mechanical
properties, with the ultimate tensile strength and tensile strain
of up to 112 kPa and 1420%, respectively, and compressive stress of
up to 1.41 MPa. Adhesiveness of the hydrogel to the skin tissue was
∼6 kPa, and it did not decrease significantly after repetitive
adhesion cycles. Protein adsorption on the hydrogel was significantly
inhibited compared to that on commercial wound dressings. Because
of the mechano-responsive deformation of micelles, the release of
drug from the hydrogel could be precisely controlled by the extent
and cycles of mechanical loading and unloading, endowing the hydrogel
with superior antibacterial property against both Gram-positive and
Gram-negative bacteria. In addition, drug penetration into the skin
tissue was enhanced by mechanical stress applied to the hydrogel.
The micelle-cross-linked zwitterionic hydrogel also showed good cell
biocompatibility, negligible skin irritation, and healing capacity
to acute skin wounds in mice. Such a tough mechano-responsive hydrogel
holds great promise as wound dressings for acute wounds subjected
to frequent movements.
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