Multifunctional enzymatically-generated hydrogel platforms for chronic wound application
- Autores: Ivaylo Stefanov
- Directores de la Tesis: Tzanko Tzankov (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) ( España ) en 2019
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Pere Garriga Solé (presid.), Carla Joana Silva (secret.), Andrea Zille (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Polímeros y Biopolímeros por la Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya
- Materias:
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
- Resumen
Chronic wounds became burdensome problem of worldwide healthcare systems, along with the increased elderly population, which is the most vulnerable risk group, predisposed to their development. Chronic wounds represent a “silent epidemic” that affect a large fraction of the population and are often regarded as a comorbid condition. Statistical surveys indicated that 1-2 % of the population in developed countries will suffer from chronic wounds during their lifetime.
Contemporary clinical treatment involves a combination of techniques and procedures aiming at eradication of wound chronicity and switching the biochemical entities to normal wound healing. In this regard, wound dressings have been affirmed and widely accepted as integral part of wound healing therapies. Wound care, by using dressings dates from ancient times, when for instance ancient egyptians applied and arranged bandages. Nowadays, the market is dominated by dressings, which only function besides a simple physical barrier is to balance the wound moisture by either absorbing excess exudates or providing moisture environment. However, the multifactorial nature of chronic wounds often renders this single-factor directed therapy as low or non-effective, aggravating the patient outcome. Thus, the demands for expanding the treatment options to more effective therapy brought about the development of bioactive dressings. These dressings should not only protect the wound and control the wound moisture, but also interact with various adverse wound constituents, modulating their bio-activities in favor of healing.
Materials with inherent wound healing features are highly desireable and more attention to such materials among the research communities has lead to the design of wound dressings with improved characteristics. However, amongst the myriad novel dressings synthesized, there is still lack of universal dressing with a panel of features able to address most of the devastating chronic wound constituents. The lack of such on-market dressing, lead to huge economical burden of the healthcare systems, holding significant part of their budgets. Development of universal multifunctional dressing, appropriate for management of many types of chronic wounds will boost the health systems to minimize the costs and improve the quality of patient’s life.
This thesis develops multifunctional biopolymer-based hydrogel materials as a bioactive platform with appropriate exploitation characteristics for treatment of chronic wound. To this end, hydrogels were developed by using environmentally benign approach, based on enzymatic reactions. Intrinsically bioactive biopolymer chitosan which served as a matrix, was modified with thiol groups and further in situ enzymatically crosslinked with two different natural polyphenols. The incorporated in the biopolymer matrix polyphenols, exhibited dual role on the hydrogel performance by providing: 1) structural integrity by crosslinking the biopolymer chains; 2) bioactive features, through interaction with major chronic wound factors. The multifunctionality of the obtained materials in the treatment of chronic wounds was evaluated by in-vitro and ex-vivo experiments with chronic wound exudates. The hydrogels exhibited beneficial for wound healing properties, such as inhibitory activity against deleterious wound enzymes and antioxidant activity, and antibacterial activity coupled with biocompatibility to human skin cells.
