One Stone Three Birds: Silver Sulfadiazine Modulates the Stability and Dynamics of Hydrogels for Infected Wound Healing.

Dynamic covalent bond hydrogels have demonstrated significant application potential in biomedical fields for their dynamic reversibility. However, the contradiction between the stability and dynamics of the hydrogel restricts its application. Here, utilizing silver sulfadiazine (AgSD) as a catalyst, we constructed hyaluronic acid-based hydrogels through imine bond crosslinking and incorporated disulfide bonds within the same crosslinking chain. It was found that AgSD can accelerate the formation of imine crosslinking bonds to improve the stability of hydrogels, thereby shortening the gelation time by approximately 36.9 times, enhancing compression strength and adhesion strength by around 2.4 times and 1.7 times, respectively, while inhibiting swelling and degradation rates to about 2.1 times and 3.7 times. Besides, AgSD can coordinate with disulfide bonds to enhance the dynamics of hydrogel, enhancing the hydrogel self-healing efficiency by approximately 2.3 times while reducing the relaxation time by around 25.1 times. Significantly, AgSD imparts remarkable antibacterial properties to the hydrogel, thereby effectively facilitating the healing of bacterial infected wounds. Consequently, introducing AgSD enables hydrogels to possess concurrent stability, dynamics, and antibacterial properties. This strategy of regulating hydrogels by introducing AgSD provides a valuable reference for the application of dynamic covalent bonds. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.