A green, ROS-scavenging and anti-bacterial hydrogel loading MnO2-curcumin nanocomposite for the full-thickness wound healing

Recently, nanozymes have been widely applied for the enhancement of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and hypoxia, which is a major obstacle to the quick repairing of skin wound. However, their intrinsic low bioavailability and biosafety is still a great challenge for the broad introduction in the wound healing. Meanwhile, the fabrication of hydrogel wound dressing mostly accompany the complicated polymer modification, synthetic polymer usage and following pollution and health risk. Nanocellulose (CNC) has been remarked as a good candidate for functional hydrogel dressing, however, its role is generally confined to a simple mechanical reinforce or Schiff base participant in the oxidized form. With this regards, in the present paper, we first developed a ROS-scavenging, MnO2-curcumin 2-curcumin nanocomplex stabilized by bovine serum albumin (BSA) (called BMC NPs). Dopamine was oxidative polymerized on the nanocellulose chain to form the CNC-polydopamine (CNC-PDA) in a facile way, and cross-linked quickly with thiol-fortified gelatin (Gel-SH) via the catechol-thiol addition to produce the adhesive, self-healing and hemostatic hydrogel. The CNC-PDA + Gel-SH hydrogel loading BMC NPs showed an excellent anti-oxidant, and anti-bacterial capacity. In vivo full-thickness wound experiment also confirmed that CNC-PDA + Gel-SH + BMC NPs hydrogel has a good re-epithelization, collagen synthesis, ROS clearance and anti-inflammation with the NIR treatment. Our result demonstrates the promising effect of nanocomposite-biomolecule conjugate in the wound healing as well as the great potential of PDAcoating chemistry in the hydrogel preparation.