Conductive, Self-Healing, Adhesive, and Antibacterial Hydrogels Based on Lignin/Cellulose for Rapid MRSA-Infected Wound Repairing

Abstract

The abuse of antibiotics induces the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria, which greatly increases the difficulty of clinical treatment of infected wounds. It is urgent to design a multifunctional wound dressing independent of antibiotics. In this work, we designed multifunctional hydrogels based on lignin and cellulose in natural polymers. Lignin with antioxidant properties could reduce silver nanoparticles in situ and could also be used as a crosslinking agent to construct hydrogels between hydroxypropyl cellulose modified with phenylboric acid by a dynamic borate bond. Hydrogels have excellent properties such as self-healing, shape adaptability, biocompatibility, blood compatibility, antioxidant properties, excellent broad-spectrum antimicrobial properties, good tissue adhesion, and electrical conductivity. The tissue adhesion of hydrogels endows them with an excellent hemostasis property in a rat liver injury model. In vivo experiments demonstrated that hydrogels can maintain a moist healing environment, reduce inflammatory cell infiltration, promote M2 macrophage polarization, accelerate collagen deposition, promote the regeneration of new blood vessels, and significantly speed up the wound healing of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)-infected wounds. Therefore, these multifunctional hydrogels are an excellent candidate to treat multiple stages of wound healing and have a broad application prospect in the medical field.

Ultrafast Fabrication of Lignin-Encapsulated Silica Nanoparticles Reinforced Conductive Hydrogels with High Elasticity and Self-Adhesion for Strain Sensors

“…37−39 Moreover, lignin not only possesses the characteristics of antiultraviolet activity, antibacterial property, and good biocompatibility but also can serve as a reducing agent, which can form dynamic redox reactions with metal ions (e.g., Ag + , Cu 2+ , Zn 2+ , Ni 3+ , and Fe 3+ ) to facilely fabricate multifunctional hydrogels at room temperature. 11,38,40,41 For instance, Lu et al 33 developed a lignin−Ag NPs dynamic redox system to rapidly fabricate the adhesive and tough hydrogels for simultaneously achieving long-term (28 days) self-adhesion. However, lignin suffers from poor water solubility, which precludes its application in the hydrogels to replace the water-soluble polyphenols.…”

“…Lignin, as the second most abundant organic polymer resources acquired from plants, is composed of the abundant reductive phenolic hydroxyls and methoxy groups that can be oxidized to generate catechol groups, thereby offering adhesion with different substrates through hydrogen bonding, π–π stacking, and coordination bonds, etc. − Moreover, lignin not only possesses the characteristics of antiultraviolet activity, antibacterial property, and good biocompatibility but also can serve as a reducing agent, which can form dynamic redox reactions with metal ions (e.g., Ag + , Cu 2+ , Zn 2+ , Ni 3+ , and Fe 3+ ) to facilely fabricate multifunctional hydrogels at room temperature. ,,, For instance, Lu et al developed a lignin–Ag NPs dynamic redox system to rapidly fabricate the adhesive and tough hydrogels for simultaneously achieving long-term (28 days) self-adhesion. However, lignin suffers from poor water solubility, which precludes its application in the hydrogels to replace the water-soluble polyphenols.…”

Hydrogels for the treatment of oral and maxillofacial diseases: current research, challenges, and future directions

“…Researchers proposed a novel strategy of using lignin with an antioxidant property to reduce silver ions in situ. Lignin also constituted hydrogels between hydroxypropyl cellulose modified with phenylboric acid by a dynamic borate bond, endowing hydrogels with outstanding properties including self-healing, tissue adhesion and electrical conductivity, thus accelerating collagen deposition and promoting wound healing 106 . In addition, HP and AMP could perform antibacterial/antibiofilm effect, but short half-life and difficulty remaining at the lesion site limited their application as wound healing dressing.…”

Light-Triggered Adhesive Silk-Based Film for Effective Photodynamic Antibacterial Therapy and Rapid Hemostasis

“…However, they are often invalid for deep wounds with irregular shape and low elasticity, such as the liver, brittle tissue, and abundant capillaries, which are inconvenient to press. Meanwhile, the injury sites are usually at high risk of bacterial infection, which can result in serious symptoms ( Deng et al, 2021 ; Zheng et al, 2021 ; Zhu et al, 2021 ). Therefore, it is necessary to develop multifunctional nonpressing hemostatic agents that can perform rapid hemostasis with effective antibacterial activity for minimizing blood loss and improving survival in the clinic.…”