Tuning Blood-Material Interactions to Generate Versatile Hemostatic Powders and Gels

Polymer-based hemostatic materials/devices have been increasingly exploited for versatile clinical scenarios, while there is an urgent need to reveal the rational design/facile approach for procoagulant surfaces through regulating blood-material interactions. In this work, degradable powders (PLPS) and thermoresponsive gels (F127-PLPS) are readily developed as promising hemostatic materials for versatile clinical applications, through tuning blood-material interactions with optimized grafting of cationic polylysine: the former is facilely prepared by conjugating polylysine onto porous starch particle, while F127-PLPS is prepared by the simple mixture of PLPS and commercial thermosensitive polymer. In vitro and in vivo results demonstrate that PLPS2 with the optimal-/medium content of polylysine grafts achieve the superior hemostatic performance. The underlying procoagulant mechanism of PLPS2 surface is revealed as the selective fibrinogen adsorption among the competitive plasma-protein-adsorption process, which is the foundation of other blood-material interactions. Moreover, in vitro results confirm the achieved procoagulant surface of F127-PLPS through optimal PLPS2 loading. Together with the tunable thermoresponsiveness, F127-PLPS exhibits outstanding hemostatic utilization in both femoral-artery-injury and renal-artery-embolization models. The work thereby pioneers an appealing approach for generating versatile polymer-based hemostatic materials/devices.