Image courtesy of Diana Polekhina via Unsplash.
Wound healing is a painful, yet normal, biological process, and wounds repair themselves routinely. However, some wounds deviate from the norm. For example, people with diabetes often have complications with the healing process, so their injuries are more likely to progress to chronic wounds that may have otherwise healed in a healthy person. A Yale-led group synthesized a new composite material that adapts to the wound’s environment and works to counteract damage, potentially improving the wound-healing process.
Three components make up this hydrogel material: alginate, fibronectin, and collagen. Alginate is a natural substance, originally derived from seaweed, and frequently used as a base in wound dressings. However, there are two key problems with alginate. First, it is not the right viscosity to conform to the shapes of actual wounds in patients. Second, alginate does not advance the healing capacities of cells. Fibronectin and collagen help to remedy both of these problems. Daqian Gao, a postdoctoral associate in the Yale School of Medicine Department of Surgery, worked with colleagues to achieve a precise balance of all three substances to produce a hydrogel that could be injected into wounds of various depths and shapes. Their study also found that fibronectin and collagen help recruit other cells needed in the healing process.
Henry Hsia, a professor of surgery at Yale, highlighted how important this hydrogel could be for future therapies and further studies. “This offer[s] another way to better understand, at a very molecular and cellular level, the interactions that are important for healing,” Hsia said.