Chronic wounds are a major clinical problem with an estimated 40 million people suffering from them worldwide, and one of the most costly healthcare problems today. ‘Intelligent’ dressings may be defined as materials that respond to specific changes in the wound environment i.e. exudate volume, and harmful protease levels by altering structure or properties to bring about a useful result i.e. moist wound healing conditions or normal protease levels respectively. Considerable promise in the application of nanocellulosic hydrogels, aerogels, and nanocomposites as dressings has been demonstrated due to favorable properties that promote optimal moisture conditions. However, there have been few reports of multifunctional dressings designed to remedy the pathology of a chronic wound. Here we present a series of modified nanocellulosic and cellulosic materials designed to, remove harmful proteases from a chronic wound while detecting protease levels, and generating therapeutic levels of hydrogen peroxide that enhance cell proliferation. These materials which originate from cellulose fibers are defined as protease modulating/sensor/fibroblast proliferative (PROTOS-FIBRO) dressings, i.e. Greek root for: ‘first protease-smart fibers/ fibroblast promoting’ dressing. The sensor portion is a fluorescent peptide-cellulose conjugate that is interchangeable on the surface of different semi-occlusive dressing motifs and sensitive to protease levels found in chronic wounds. The protease modulation portion is based on the degree of surface zeta potential required on the material surface to remove excess wound protease levels. While the fibroblast proliferative portion of the dressing generates low-level therapeutic doses of hydrogen peroxide based on low levels of nanocrystalline copper and ascorbate embedded in the dressing.

Design, preparation and activity of intelligent cellulose-based protease sensor & modulating/fibroblast promoting (PROTOS-FIBRO) dressings

255th National Meeting (2018)

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