Dehydration‐Toughing Dual‐Solvent Gels with Viscoelastic Transition for Infectious Wound Treatment

Abstract

AbstractThe modulus of traditional biomedical hydrogels increases exponentially meditated by dehydration‐stiffing mechanism, which leads to the failure of interface matching between hydrogels and soft tissue wounds. It is found in the study that the dual‐solvent gels exhibit dehydration‐toughening mechanism with the slowly increasing modulus that are always match the soft tissue wounds. Therefore, dual‐solvent glycerol hydrogels (GCFen‐gly DGHs) are prepared with hydrophobically modified catechol chitosan (hmCSC) and gelatin based on the supramolecular interactions. GCFen‐gly DGHs exhibit excellent water retention capacity with a total solvent content exceeding 80%, permanent skin‐like modulus within a range of 0.45 to 4.13 kPa, and stable photothermal antibacterial abilities against S, aureus, E. coli, as well as MRSA. Infectious full‐thickness rat skin defect model and tissue section analysis indicate that GCFen‐gly DGHs are able to accelerate infectious wound healing by alleviating the inflammatory response, promoting granulation tissue growth, re‐epithelialization, collagen deposition, and vascular regeneration. As a result, GCFen‐gly DGHs is expected to become the next‐generation biological gel materials for infectious wound treatment.