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Self-Adapting Hydrogel to Improve the Therapeutic Effect in Wound-Healing.

Yongsan LiXing WangYa-Nan FuYen WeiLingyun ZhaoLei Tao
Published in: ACS applied materials & interfaces (2018)
Smart materials that can respond to multistimuli have been broadly studied. However, the smart materials that can spontaneously answer the ever-changing inner environment of living bodies have not been reported. Here, we report a strategy based on the dynamic chemistry to develop possible self-adapting solid materials that can automatically change shape without external stimuli, as organisms do. The self-adapting property of a chitosan-based self-healing hydrogel has been rediscovered since its dynamic Schiff-base network confers the unique mobility to that solid gel. As a result, the hydrogel can move slowly, like an octopus climbing through a narrow channel, only following the natural forces of surface tension and gravity. The fascinating self-adapting feature enables this hydrogel as an excellent drug carrier for the in vivo wound treatment. In a healing process of the rat-liver laceration, this self-adapting hydrogel demonstrated remarkable superiority over traditional drug delivery methods, suggesting the great potential of this self-adapting hydrogel as a promising new material for biomedical applications. We believe the current research revealed a possible strategy to achieve self-adapting materials and may pave the way toward the further development, study, and application of new-generation smart materials.
Keyphrases
  • wound healing
  • drug delivery
  • hyaluronic acid
  • cancer therapy
  • tissue engineering
  • drug release
  • machine learning
  • oxidative stress
  • emergency department
  • risk assessment
  • gram negative
  • climate change
  • solid state