Berberine-Incorporated Shape Memory Fiber Applied as a Novel Surgical Suture

Abstract

The surgical suture has long been used to reconnect the injured tissues to restore their structure and function. However, its utility remains challenging in many areas, such as surgical site infections and minimally invasive surgeries. Herein, we report a novel surgical suture that possesses both antibacterial activity and shape memory effect to address these issues. In detail, natural antibacterial berberine was incorporated directly into the spinning solution of shape memory polyurethane with a near body transition temperature, and then berberine-containing polyurethane (BP) fibers were prepared by a facile one-step wetspinning method for surgical suture. The prepared BP fibers were micro-sized and characterized by their transition temperature, morphology, water contact angles, mechanical properties, in vitro shape memory effect, drug release, and antibacterial activity. The results showed that with the increasing amount of the incorporated berberine, the transition temperatures of the fibers were not significantly affected, remains at near body temperature, while the contact angles of the fibers were significantly decreased and the mechanical properties of the fibers were significantly weakened. The optimized fiber was selected to evaluate the cytotoxicity and in vivo biocompatibility before in vivo shape memory effect and wound healing capacity in a mouse skin suture-wound model was tested. Besides the shape memory effect, it was demonstrated that the fiber is capable of antibacterial activity and anti-inflammatory effect, and promoting wound healing. The mechanism of the antibacterial activity and anti-inflammatory effect of the fiber was discussed. Overall, it is expected that by the berberine added to the fiber for surgical suture, it will be more popular and extend the utility of the sutures in a wide range of clinical applications.

Copper Sulfide Nanoparticles-Incorporated Hyaluronic Acid Injectable Hydrogel With Enhanced Angiogenesis to Promote Wound Healing

“…The distribution of CD31 was observed by a fluorescence microscope and vascular density (VD) was expressed as the percentage of positive CD31 staining per ROI which were calculated using ImageJ software (Du et al, 2017). For VEGF, hematoxylin counterstained the nuclei and the integral optical density (IOD) of each view was assessed using the ImageJ software to determine its content (Zhou et al, 2020).…”

Injectable Gelatin Hydrogel Suppresses Inflammation and Enhances Functional Recovery in a Mouse Model of Intracerebral Hemorrhage

“…Pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as interleukin-1β (IL-1β), and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), play an important role in maintaining cellular function and inflammatory activation ( Möller and Villiger, 2006 ; Zhou et al, 2019 ; Gao et al, 2020 ). Nevertheless, it is harmful if the cytokines keep working throughout inflammation.…”

Shape memory materials and 4D printing in pharmaceutics

“…In this respect, a relatively high water vapor transmission ratio, enabling appropriate wound drying, would be highly advantageous. A particular wound treatment is that obtained by the application of surgical sutures to reconnect tissues and restore their structure as well as function [146,147]. This application remains challenging especially in the case of minimally invasive surgeries, during which knotting a suture is hindered by the confined space and possible site infections.…”

“…In the field of application just described, SMMs were shown to provide the DDSs with smart performance, such as shape fixation-assisted easy application and shape recovery-assisted closure of wounds [145]. Wet and electrospinning processes turned out to be the most investigated techniques for the fabrication of prototypes conceived in the form of polymeric matrices and layered structures [146][147][148]. In the case of treatments requiring anastomosis, rings surgically applied following resection of bowel segments to enable accurate joining of two viable ends without any tension represent one of the most commonly employed systems [149].…”

“…Notably, a few of these systems showed rapid clotting due to the presence of thrombogenic materials in the formulation and the high surface area of the entire device, associated with the peculiar microstructure [145]. In this respect, the use of nanofibers typically prepared through electrospinning technology was especially successful [145][146][147][148]. Moreover, shape memory foams were devised for bleeding control, even in stressful conditions, such as in the battlefield and in high temperature environment [150].…”