Biopolymer-Assembled Porous Hydrogel Microfibers from Microfluidic Spinning for Wound Healing

Hydrogels are considered as a promising medical patch for wound healing. Researches in this aspect are focused on improving their compositions and permeability to enhance the effectiveness of wound healing. Here, novel prolamins-assembled porous hydrogel microfibers with the desired merits for treating diabetes wounds are presented. Such microfibers are continuously generated by one-step microfluidic spinning technology with acetic acid solution of prolamins as the continuous phase and deionized water as the dispersed phase. By adjusting the prolamin concentration and flow rates of microfluidics, the porous structure and morphology as well as diameters of microfibers can be well tailored. Owing to their porosity, the resultant microfibers can be employed as flexible delivery systems for wound healing actives, such as bacitracin and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). It is demonstrated that the resultant hydrogel microfibers are with good cell-affinity and effective drug release efficiency, and their woven patches display superior in vivo capability in treating diabetes wounds. Thus, it is believed that the proposed prolamins-assembled porous hydrogel microfibers will show important values in clinic wound treatments.