Summary
Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disorder that can cause significant side effects with regard to tissue healing. So-called impaired wound healing is a serious complication: leading to pathologies like chronic open wounds, gangrene, and sepsis. Chronic wounds, acute trauma, or surgical sutures create problems concerning skin regeneration and affect the patients’ quality of life due to the high probability of bacterial infection. To shorten the healing time for patients with skin wounds, by the means of biomaterials that can promote angiogenesis and faster vascularization is considered a viable strategy for skin regeneration. The antibacterial effect is also a requirement for a material to be employed in skin regeneration by reducing the possibility of infection without antibiotics administration. Bioactive glasses with gold nanoparticles (BGAuSP) are promising candidates for wound treatment due to their ability of a strong vascular proliferation.
The formal requirements, the protection of the wound bed, necessitates the introduction of a bioactive material in the hydrogel. Biopolymers, such as alginate, cellulose, and chitosan, are promising materials for wound healing. Alginate can preserve a proper level of moisture; also, it can reduce the bacterial infection at the wound bed. Cellulose can help in the exudate’s absorption; chitosan can play a significant role mainly in the first three stages during wound healing. The project aims to obtain such a hydrogel dressing containing bioactive nanocomposites with the potential to reduce healing time of the experimental skin defects. We will start from an experimental proof of concept with patented BGAuSP (TRL3). The progress in the TRL includes obtaining the suitable hydrogel form of the dressing. Finally, the dressing will materialize in laboratory validated technology with suitable hydrogels (BGAuSP-biopolymer) demonstrated in healthy and diabetic standardized experimental protocols on laboratory rats (TRL4).
The project proposes to obtain a biomaterial with applicability in wound healing which has regenerating properties by reducing the healing period as alternative solutions to existing materials on the market. For patients with chronic diseases problems may occur in the healing process of the tissue, so it is extremely important to have on the market such a material that stimulates regeneration. Given that the materials for human applications are very expensive and the procedure to go through all stages of clinical trials is very long, in this phase we propose the assays in healthy and diabetic laboratory animals, and in the future the material will be directed to human applications.