Antibacterial
hydrogels have received intensive interest in soft
tissue repair, especially for preventing infections associated with
impaired wound healing. However, developing an inherent antibacterial
hydrogel dressing with antifouling ability without causing secondary
damage to repaired tissues has proven to be promising and challenging.
In this work, a mussel-inspired zwitterionic sulfobetaine acrylamide
hydrogel incorporated with laponite (LAP) nanoplatelets and methacrylamide
dopamine (DMA) has been developed for effective wound dressings, where
LAP nanoplatelets and DMA endow the hydrogel with enhanced mechanical
strength and substance adhesiveness, respectively. Moreover, LAP nanoplatelets
could immobilize hydrophobic curcumin to form complexes, realizing
the controlled release of curcumin to provide antimicrobial activities. In vitro results showed that hydrogels did not cause obvious
cytotoxicity and hemolysis, but they still can well resist bovine
serum albumin (BSA) adsorption. Wound closure and histopathological
experiments have been performed in vivo to evaluate
the therapeutic effects of the hydrogel by a full-thickness skin defect
mouse model, and the results demonstrated that infected wounds could
be well closed after being treated with the hydrogel for 15 days.
Meanwhile, the full re-epithelialization and total formation of new
connective tissues can be clearly observed by histological analysis.
Moreover, the hydrogel could be easily removed from recovered tissues
without causing secondary damage. Therefore, this antifouling and
antimicrobial hydrogel dressing with suitable adhesiveness would provide
a new strategy for wound healing without causing secondary damage.
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