Individual Human Hair Keratin Rapidly Extracted Through the Advanced Oxidation Process and Their Hemostatic and Wound Healing Evaluations

Abstract

Autogenous keratin is a promising material for personalized wound healing applications. However, the common keratin extraction methods are time-consuming, and the variations in performance between different individual keratins are not clear. Herein, we developed TiO2 photocatalytic-assisted H2O2 oxidation strategy (H2O2/TiO2/UV), an advanced oxidation method, to rapidly extract human hair keratins within 2 h. The H2O2/TiO2/UV method for keratin extraction showed a higher protein yield compared to the H2O2 method. Keratins obtained from the developed method exhibited typical chemical and secondary structures. Furthermore, individual keratins from four young girls were extracted by using the H2O2/TiO2/UV method, and individual keratin/PCL films were successfully fabricated within 5 h. More importantly, individual keratin films displayed superior hemostatic performance and wound healing in vivo compared to that of keratin extracted via the H2O2 method. Interestingly, the four individual keratin films exhibited similar hemostatic efficiency but distinct wound-healing properties in terms of epidermal thickness and density of skin appendages. These data indicated that the developed H2O2/TiO2/UV method is an efficient and feasible approach to extract human hair keratins, which provides an intriguing possibility to explore personalized materials for promoting wound healing.