Injectable Self-Healing\nAdhesive Chitosan Hydrogel\nwith Antioxidative, Antibacterial, and Hemostatic Activities for Rapid\nHemostasis and Skin Wound Healing

Abstract

Engineered wound dressing materials with excellent injectability,\nself-healing ability, tissue-adhesiveness, especially the ones possessing\npotential therapeutic effects have great practical significance in\nhealthcare. Herein, an injectable quaternary ammonium chitosan (QCS)/tannic\nacid (TA) hydrogel based on QCS and TA was designed and fabricated\nby facile mixing of the two ingredients under physiological conditions.\nIn this system, hydrogels were mainly cross-linked by dynamic ionic\nbonds and hydrogen bonds between QCS and TA, which endows the hydrogel\nwith excellent injectable, self-healing, and adhesive properties.\nBenefitting from the inherent antioxidative, antibacterial, and hemostatic\nabilities of TA and QCS, this hydrogel showed superior reactive oxygen\nspecies scavenging activity, broad-spectrum antibacterial ability,\nas well as rapid hemostatic capability. Moreover, the QCS/TA_2.5 hydrogel (containing 2.5% TA) exhibited excellent biocompatibility.\nThe in vivo experiments also showed that QCS/TA_2.5 hydrogel\ndressing not only rapidly stopped the bleeding of arterial and deep\nincompressible wounds in mouse tail amputation, femoral artery hemorrhage,\nand liver incision models but also significantly accelerated wound\nhealing in a full-thickness skin wound model. For the great potentials\nlisted above, this multifunctional QCS/TA_2.5 hydrogel offers\na promising network as a dressing material for both rapid hemostasis\nand skin wound repair.