A biocompatible and easy-to-make polyelectrolyte dressing with tunable drug delivery properties for wound care

Chitosan (CS) is a biodegradable and biocompatible polysaccharide which displays immune-stimulatory effects and anti-bacterial properties to facilitate wound closure. Over the years, different CS-based dressings have been developed; however, most of them are not fully biodegradable due to the involvement of synthetic polymers during dressing fabrication. In addition, preparation of many of these dressings is laborious, and may impose damaging effects on fragile therapeutic molecules. The objective of this study is to address these problems by developing a tunable, biocompatible, and biodegradable CS-based dressing for wound treatment. The dressing is fabricated via electrostatic interactions between CS and carmellose (CM). Its swelling properties, erosion behavior, loading efficiency and drug release sustainability can be tuned by simply changing the CS/CM mass-to-mass ratio. Upon loaded with minocycline hydrochloride, the dressing effectively protects the wound in mice from infection and enhances wound closure. Regarding its high tunability and promising in vivo performance, our dressing warrants further development as a user-friendly dressing for use in wound care.