Staying one step ahead of chronic wounds by designing symbiotic, responsive functionality into dynamic nanohydrogels

The dynamic environment of chronic wounds makes them an on-going clinical challenge. Conventional treatments often fail to respond to the pharmacological complexities of the system effectively, which compounded by ineffective pharmacokinetics, means a new multifactorial paradigm is required. Simple hydrogels have long been proposed to be effective wound dressings, as they can provide a highly hydrated and regenerative microenvironment; however, their colloidal instability and inefficient loading parameters may cause burst release of therapeutics and require multiple reapplications, which is both pharmacologically and economically unfavourable. Nanomaterials, on the other hand, facilitate sustained therapeutic release and are generally regarded as stable; however, to avoid off target effects, they need to be spatially defined in a controlled fashion. Here, we discuss the progress made towards engineering the activity of these nanohydrogels through developments in multicomponent materials. The goal is to meet both the wound and clinically relevant demands via the inclusion of symbiotic features across multiple length scales. We introduce critical developments enabled by this approach and discuss their potential application as therapeutic delivery agents to treat various common chronic wounds. We propose future directions to further develop nanohydrogels as function-at-demand topical wound dressings to contain chronic wounds.