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A bionic cooling skin that marries protection, comfort and potent antibacterial activity could be what’s been missing in the treatment of infected wounds.
A bionic skin capable of passive cooling and on-demand antibacterial activity opens the door to the next generation of biomedical materials. Created by scientists from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the material closely mimics the mechanical properties and permeability of natural skin, demonstrating excellent healing when used to treat infected mouse wounds.
Wound repair is a complex biological process, with bacterial infection presenting a particular risk. Infections can delay healing, damage newly formed tissue and result in potentially life-threatening complications, meaning that their management is paramount. Traditional wound dressings have been transformative in this area; however, they are not without limitations. For example, gauze dressings may adhere to wounds, causing pain during removal; foam dressings are costly; and hydrocolloid dressings are unsuitable for infected wounds.
Optimal wound dressings combine high protective function with comfort and antibacterial efficiency, but a single material that integrates all these characteristics is tough to achieve. With a view to changing that, the researchers developed a bionic cooling skin for infected wound management that integrates solvent welding technology and single-sided metal–organic frameworks that generate reactive oxygen species in response to visible light.
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The resulting material has a Janus structure: a hydrophobic outer layer made of PVDF fibers that reflects sunlight and transmits mid-infrared radiation for passive cooling, while a hydrophilic inner layer embedded with Fe20-ZIF8 nanoparticles provides antibacterial properties to aid healing.
Experiments on Staphylococcus aureus-infected mouse wounds revealed that the bionic skin promotes rapid healing under white light. Wounds treated with the biomaterial were almost completely closed within 11 days, as were those treated with an amoxicillin solution as a positive control. Both groups exhibited more than twice the healing rate of the other dressings tested.
The bionic dressing also achieved over 97% antibacterial efficacy in in vivo antibacterial tests, rivaling antibiotic-treated controls.
Meanwhile, RNA sequencing and quantitative PCR were used to identify the mechanism underpinning this healing. The dressing upregulates various angiogenesis markers, cell migration genes and antimicrobial peptides, and simultaneously downregulates a number of inflammation-related genes, these analyses revealed.
As well as having tensile strength and elasticity that is comparable to human skin, the bionic cooling skin reduced the surface temperature of wounds exposed to sunlight by around 4°C, and, in rat wound models under realistic outdoor conditions, demonstrated an average cooling of 1.7°C relative to the uncovered wound.
Ultimately, these findings highlight the novel biomaterial’s potential for treating infected wounds and addressing longstanding challenges in wound healing.
“This innovative bionic wound dressing not only enhances comfort and healing efficacy but also advances our understanding of wound repair mechanisms, holding significant promise for future wound care and biomedical material design,” the researchers concluded.
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