Regulating Sepia melanin agglomerates using tailored kaolinite to accelerate skin wound healing

Uncontrolled hemorrhage and wound healing difficulties are significant challenges in medical care. Wounds that fail to close within a limited time frame are often associated with continuous hemorrhage, hard-to-treat infections, and chronic conditions. Sepia melanin that contains eumelanin and is extracted from the ink of cuttlefish Sepia officinalis exists as agglomerates in the natural state, and it can be disassembled using kaolinite (D-SM-Kaolin) to accelerate hemostasis and wound healing. D-SM-Kaolin fabrication using Sepia melanin cross-linked with kaolinite through dissolving, disassembling, and sedimentation, and different alkaline solvents controlled within a certain range. Hemostatic evaluation in vitro and in vivo, D-SM-Kaolin exhibited accelerated hemostatic effects, and thereinto, the blood loss takes 5 times less than contrast items. The hemostatic mechanism involves kaolinite's intrinsic clotting cascade and facilitating blood constituents concentration at the hemorrhage site. In a normal wound model, D-SM-Kaolin also exhibited an accelerated wound healing, and more collagen formation combined with tissue cell infiltration was observed. The wound healing mechanism was attributed to the D-SM-Kaolin absorbs the excess wound exudate and accelerates the wound closure at the wound sites, besides SM's intrinsic adhesion effect and kaolin's intrinsic clotting cascade characteristic. These findings suggest that SM agglomeration could be eliminated using kaolinite, and thus is more beneficial to the field of hemostasis and wound healing.