[Research Dynamics] The team of Professor Yang Guang, School of Life sciences, Huazhong University of Science and Technology: Biodegradable and electroactive regenerated bacterial cellulose /MXene (Ti3C2Tx) hydrogel coupled with electrical stimulation for skin wound repair

Skin wound healing is a precise and complex process involving inflammation, granulation tissue formation, stromal remodeling, and epithelial reformation.
Skin wounds, especially those severely damaged by injury or disease, cannot repair themselves immediately and may result in loss of function or even death due to poor healing.
In order to improve wound healing, wound dressings are essential for repairing and restoring skin function.
At present, hydrogel wound dressing is popular because of its unique advantages.
Hydrogel dressings can not only maintain a relatively moist wound environment, absorb excess tissue exudates and maintain good O2 permeability, but can also be easily removed without causing secondary skin trauma.
In addition, hydrogel dressings can cool the surface of the wound, thus reducing the patient's pain.
However, despite this, most hydrogel dressings only focus on improving tissue rehydration and minimizing wound-site infection, but rarely actively regulate the behavior of endogenous cells to promote wound healing, leading to passive wound repair.
This uncontrolled regulation of the wound healing process may interfere with multiple biological pathways and inflammatory responses, ultimately leading to the failure of wound repair.
In addition, the skin is one of the tissues sensitive to electrical stimulation.
A large number of studies have reported that Electrical stimulation (ES) can actively regulate cell behavior, such as guiding the adhesion, proliferation, migration and differentiation of skin cells, so as to improve the regeneration activity of cells, promote skin wound healing and tissue regeneration.
However, most hydrogel wound dressings are not electrically active and therefore cannot respond to physiological electrical signals or external electric field stimulation at the wound site during healing.
Therefore, in order to overcome the shortcomings of passive wound healing of conventional hydrogel dressings and make full use of the advantages of ES, it is urgent to develop a new functional electroactive hydrogel dressings that can respond to and coupling electrical stimulation to promote skin wound healing.
With this in mind, the team of Professor Yang Guang of Huazhong University of Science and Technology reported a biodegradable, electroactive hydrogel that was coupled with electrical stimulation for skin wound repair.
Related research with "Biodegradable and Electroactive Regenerated Bacterial Cellulose/MXene (Ti3C2Tx) Composite Hydrogel as Wound Dressing for Accelerating Skin Wound ranging under Electrical Stimulation",
Published in Advanced Healthcare Materials, DOI: 10.1002 / ADhm.202000872.

Highlights of this article:

1. The regenerated bacterial cellulose /MXene hydrogel (rBC/MXene) maintains the excellent properties of rBC hydrogel, with high water absorption capacity, good biodegradability and flexibility.

2. The addition of MXene gives rBC/MXene composite hydrogels excellent mechanical properties, thermal stability, good electrical conductivity and biocompatibility.

3. The multi-functional rBC/MXene hydrogel showed excellent performance in promoting wound healing in the rat whole-cortex wound surface model.

4. Coupled with external electrical stimulation, the biodegradable electrically active rBC/MXene composite hydrogel dressing can actively regulate cell behavior, significantly improve the regeneration activity of NIH3T3 cells, and thus accelerate wound healing more effectively.
Therefore, the developed biodegradable and electroactive rBC/MXene hydrogel has great potential for application in wound dressings. Meanwhile, this study provides an effective collaborative treatment strategy for accelerating the wound repair process by coupling the electroactive hydrogel dressings with electrical stimulation.

The first author of this paper is MAO Lin, a doctoral student of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and corresponding authors are Professor Yang Guang and Dr. Shi Zhijun of Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
Huazhong University of Science and Technology is the first author unit.

The research work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Key Research and development Plan.

Link to paper: XXXX

Paper Citation:L. Mao, S. Hu, Yi. Gao, L. Wang, W. Zhao, L. Fu, H. Cheng, L. Xia, S. Xie, W. Ye, Z. Shi*, G. Yang*, Biodegradable and Electroactive Regenerated Bacterial Cellulose/MXene (Ti3C2Tx) Composite Hydrogel as Wound Dressing for Accelerating Skin Wound Healing under Electrical Stimulation. Adv. Healthcare Mater. 2020.2000872. https://doi.org/10.1002/adhm.202000872