New Hydrogel Wound Treatment Activates Immune System to Reduce Scars

 Scientists have developed a brand new hydrogel ready to quickly heal animal wounds while minimizing scarring, with the immune system's help. It could potentially work as an upgrade to our body's injury-healing abilities.

The microporous annealed particle (MAP) gel had previously shown promise as a structure designed to support tissue growth and speed up wound healing. Here, the MAP gel was modified to trigger a specific response too.

So far, the research has only checked out wound healing in mice, but it could potentially help people with burns, cuts, diabetic ulcers, and other styles of wounds that will otherwise leave damaged, scarred skin behind.

A repaired wound with hair follicles shown in green. (Duke University)

"This study shows us that activating the system is often accustomed to tilt the balance of wound healing from tissue destruction and scar formation to tissue repair and skin regeneration," says biomedical engineer Tatiana Segura, from Duke University.

Scar tissue is made as a part of a rapid reaction to injury by the body: it reduces pain and limits the prospect of infection. However, the regrown skin isn't complete, lacking sweat glands and hair follicles, and it is also more liable to future injury.

Having already used MAP gels as how of organizing cells to repair wounds faster, here the team tried to stay the biological scaffold in situ for extended by flipping the peptide structure of a specific chemical linker within the gel therefore the body wouldn't see it as being familiar and – in theory – make it tougher to interrupt down.

"Previously we'd seen that because the wound began to heal, the MAP gel began to lose porosity, which limited how the tissue could grow through the structure," says biomedical engineer Don Griffin from the University of Virginia.

"We hypothesized that slowing down the degradation rate of the MAP scaffold would prevent the pores from closing and supply additional support to the tissue because it grows, which might improve the tissue's quality."

However, in experiments on mice, the team's attempts to prolong the lifetime of the scaffold by making it more alien to the body had the alternative effect: the gel had almost entirely disappeared from the wound site by the time it had healed.

The peptide structure flip did trigger a unique reaction, but from the more specialized adaptive system – it uses different kinds of cells and a more regenerative reaction to try and do its work.

The antibodies and macrophage cells that were triggered during this case were better ready to remove traces of the hydrogel, moreover as repairing skin in a very way that was more just like the original skin (including hair follicles).

This process still must be adapted for the organic structure, of course, but we share plenty of the repair mechanisms with other mammals, and also the scientists are hopeful that a modified version of their hydrogel could eventually be accustomed repair wounds faster and more naturally – and maybe even contribute to vaccine development.

"I am excited about the chance of designing materials that will directly interact with the system to support tissue regeneration," says Segura. "This may be a new approach for us."