Forum for Science, Industry and Business

UNH researchers create a more effective hydrogel for healing wounds

Wound healing can be complex and challenging, especially when a patient has other health obstacles that seriously impede the process.

Electron microscope image of the porous hydrogel

Credit: UNH

Often injectable hydrogels are applied to irregular shaped wounds, like diabetic ulcers, to help form a temporary matrix, or structure, to keep the wound stable while cells rejuvenate.

The caveat is that current hydrogels are not porous enough and do not allow neighboring cells to pass through toward the wound to help it mend.

"While valuable for helping patients, current hydrogels have limited clinical efficacy," said Kyung Jae Jeong, assistant professor of chemical engineering at UNH. "We discovered a simple solution to make the hydrogels more porous and therefore help to speed up the healing."

In the study, recently published in the journal of ACS Applied Bio Materials, the researchers outline how they made a macroporous hydrogel by combining readily available gelatin microgels - hydrogels that are a few hundred microns in diameter - with an inexpensive enzyme called microbial transglutaminase (mTG).

Gelatin was used because it is a natural protein derived from collagen, a protein found in connective tissue in the body such as skin. Assembling these tiny microgels with mTG helped create a hydrogel with large enough pores for the neighboring cells to move into the wound for repair.

In addition, this new injectable formulation allows for the slow release of protein drugs to aid wound healing, such as platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF). The researchers compared conventional nonporous hydrogels with the new macroporous hydrogels, and found a notable increase in the migration of tissue cells inside the hydrogel, which is the hallmark of wound healing.

Along with diabetic ulcers, the macroporous hydrogel could help with other forms of healing on the skin, cornea, internal organs during surgery and even has military implications.

This work was supported in part by the NIH COBRE Center of Integrated Biomedical and Bioengineering Research through an Institutional Development Award (IDeA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

The University of New Hampshire is a flagship research university that inspires innovation and transforms lives in our state, nation and world. More than 16,000 students from all 50 states and 71 countries engage with an award-winning faculty in top ranked programs in business, engineering, law, health and human services, liberal arts and the sciences across more than 200 programs of study. UNH's research portfolio includes partnerships with NASA, NOAA, NSF and NIH, receiving more than $100 million in competitive external funding every year to further explore and define the frontiers of land, sea and space.

PHOTOS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD

https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/sites/default/files/media/human-skin-cells.png

This is a 3D confocal microscope image of human skin cells growing around and within the porous hydrogel.

Credit: UNH

https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/sites/default/files/media/3-d-image-skin-cells-2.jpg

Second image of 3D confocal image of human skin cells growing around and within the porous hydrogel with different staining.

Credit: UNH

https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/sites/default/files/media/porous-hydrogel.jpg

Electron microscope image of the porous hydrogel.

Credit: UNH

Robbin Ray | EurekAlert!
Further information:
https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/news/release/2018/11/20/unh-researchers-create-more-effective-hydrogel-healing-wounds
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsabm.8b00380

Im Focus: Data use draining your battery? Tiny device to speed up memory while also saving power

The more objects we make "smart," from watches to entire buildings, the greater the need for these devices to store and retrieve massive amounts of data quickly without consuming too much power.

Millions of new memory cells could be part of a computer chip and provide that speed and energy savings, thanks to the discovery of a previously unobserved...

Im Focus: An energy-efficient way to stay warm: Sew high-tech heating patches to your clothes

Personal patches could reduce energy waste in buildings, Rutgers-led study says

What if, instead of turning up the thermostat, you could warm up with high-tech, flexible patches sewn into your clothes - while significantly reducing your...

Im Focus: Lethal combination: Drug cocktail turns off the juice to cancer cells

A widely used diabetes medication combined with an antihypertensive drug specifically inhibits tumor growth – this was discovered by researchers from the University of Basel’s Biozentrum two years ago. In a follow-up study, recently published in “Cell Reports”, the scientists report that this drug cocktail induces cancer cell death by switching off their energy supply.

The widely used anti-diabetes drug metformin not only reduces blood sugar but also has an anti-cancer effect. However, the metformin dose commonly used in the...

Im Focus: New Foldable Drone Flies through Narrow Holes in Rescue Missions

A research team from the University of Zurich has developed a new drone that can retract its propeller arms in flight and make itself small to fit through narrow gaps and holes. This is particularly useful when searching for victims of natural disasters.

Inspecting a damaged building after an earthquake or during a fire is exactly the kind of job that human rescuers would like drones to do for them. A flying...

Im Focus: Topological material switched off and on for the first time

Key advance for future topological transistors

Over the last decade, there has been much excitement about the discovery, recognised by the Nobel Prize in Physics only two years ago, that there are two types...