Photo-Crosslinked Antimicrobial Hydrogel Exhibiting Wound Healing Ability and Curing Infections In Vivo

With the increasing focus on healthcare research in the current times, therapeutic and biomaterial interventions for healing of wounds and mitigation of wound-associated infections have seen expedited progress. Conventional approaches consist of release-active gels, which demonstrate leaching of antimicrobials, such as antibiotics, metal ions, etc. However, these systems suffer from the disadvantages of burst release, reservoir exhaustion, and associated toxicity. In this report, intrinsically antimicrobial hydrogel (HyDex) is developed by one-pot UV crosslinking of methacrylated dextran, polyethylene glycol diacrylate, and cationic lipophilic methacrylate with varied hydrophobic chain, which displays broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity, hemostatic ability, and rapid wound closure efficacy. The optimized hydrogel exhibits potent antimicrobial efficacy against multidrug-resistant Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria as well as against pathogenic fungus Candida albicans. The HyDex hydrogel shows rapid arrest of bleeding in mice liver puncture model. The hydrogel kills carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii in a murine model of burn wound infection with >99% reduction in bacterial burden. Furthermore, this hydrogel displays significant reduction in inflammatory responses, with accelerated wound healing in rat deep wound model. Collectively, these results imply the excellent promise held by lead hydrogel to be developed for tackling deep tissue wounds, notorious infections, and resulting inflammatory responses.