Polymers/Biopolymers For Modern Wound Dressing

Wound dressing has remained challenging for some life-threatening wounds such as burning. Researchers have been engaged in looking for better solutions. A review paper given in the “Journal of Material Sciences & Engineering” ( web link for detailed paper given at the end of the article ) depicted the ideal wound dressing based on the mechanism of human skins, compared traditional wound dressing methods to modern methods, and reviewed the use of polymers and biopolymers as advanced materials for wound dressing.

Future Needs for Would Dressings

Despite the various methods and materials for wound dressings, to date, no wound dressing fully satisfies the requirements of an ideal substitute for skin ECM (Extracellular Matrix ). Most wound dressings are limited by fast degradation, weak adhesiveness and absorption, lack of drug release properties, poor oxygen permeability, as well as not being able to prevent protein adhesion onto the wound dressing surface. It is urgent to design and fabricate wound dressings which can address these problems simultaneously, thereby leading to improved wound management, creating an easy solution for wounds, and decreasing death rate induced by severe wounds and bleeding.

Modern Wound Dressing Materials

Synthetic polymers such as polyvinyldene floride (PVDF) and polypropylene (PP) have been widely used for wound dressing materials. Poly (ε-caprolactone) (PCL), polyethylene glycol (PEG), polyethylene oxide (PEO), polyurethane (PU), poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA), poly (lactic acid) (PLA), and poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) are frequently used synthetic materials that have been approved by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for biomedical applications, due to their good biocompatibility, biodegradability and non-toxic properties. For example, PLGA is commercially available, inexpensive, biocompatible, biodegradable, and showed sustained drug release properties, making it the ideal candidate for drug delivery and other biomedical applications. Moreover, Porporato discovered that lactate played an important role in promoting angiogenesis and wound healing process, and concluded that PLGA to be the most suitable polymer to provide lactate for enhanced wound management. PEG displays excellent biocompatibility, biodegradability, hydrophilicity and wettability. It is inexpensive and readily available, and therefore widely used for biomedical applications. More recently, Kim has shown that PEG provides anti-fouling properties, preventing the adsorption of protein and other biomolecules on to nanofiber surface, which enhances drug release properties and aids in maintenance of nanofiber surface properties during use. Hydrogels and nanofibrous scaffolds based on these synthetic polymers have been fabricated for biomedical applications with good mechanical properties.

However, the application of these synthetic polymers alone as wound dressings are limited by their adhesive properties and their ability to accelerate wound healing process.

Therefore, it is critical to produce a new and improved wound dressing by synthesizing, modifying, and systematically designing wound dressing materials with good mechanical properties while accelerating the healing process at molecular, cellular and systematic levels. It is also desirable for wound dressings to have good drug release properties to further promote the wound healing process. Detailed research article is given at the following web link.

(Ref: Journal of Material Sciences & Engineering)

https://www.hilarispublisher.com/open-access/modern-wound-dressing-using-polymersbiopolymers-2169-0022-1000454.pdf