Recent advances of on-demand dissolution of hydrogel dressings

Abstract

Wound management is a major global challenge and a big financial burden to the healthcare system due to the rapid growth of chronic diseases including the diabetes, obesity, and aging population. Modern solutions to wound management include hydrogels that dissolve on demand, and the development of such hydrogels is of keen research interest. The formation and subsequent on-demand dissolution of hydrogels is of keen interest to scientists and clinicians. These hydrogels have excellent properties such as tissue adhesion, swelling, and water absorption. In addition, these hydrogels have a distinctive capacity to form in situ and dissolve on-demand via physical or chemical reactions. Some of these hydrogels have been successfully used as a dressing to reduce bleeding in hepatic and aortal models, and the hydrogels remove easily afterwards. However, there is an extremely wide array of different ways to synthesize these hydrogels. Therefore, we summarize here the recent advances of hydrogels that dissolve on demand, covering both chemical cross-linking cases and physical cross-linking cases. We believe that continuous exploration of dissolution strategies will uncover new mechanisms of dissolution and extend the range of applications for hydrogel dressings.

Toward Stimuli‐Responsive Dynamic Thermosets through Continuous Development and Improvements in Covalent Adaptable Networks (CANs)

“…At the intersection of tissue engineering and controlled release lies biomaterial‐facilitated wound healing, as infection prophylaxis and control over the cellular processes involved with healthy remodeling require tunable mechanical and chemical properties for accurate biophysical instruction to cells. Hydrogels offer the added benefit of a water‐swollen interface, preventing wound desiccation, and CANs afford structural transience in correspondence with user‐defined needs of impermanent structures 94. For example, the thiol–thioester exchange reaction was employed during dressing removal following burn wound healing for user‐directed and facile dissolution of dynamic hydrogel‐based burn wound dressings, avoiding extant issues with tissue debridement 95.…”

Transparent PDMS Bioreactors for the Fabrication and Analysis of Multi-Layer Pre-vascularized Hydrogels Under Continuous Perfusion

“…Typically, hydrogels left to themselves in contact with fluid rather tend to increase their volume according to their swelling ratio ( Lu et al, 2018 ). We assume that the constant perfusion of the hydrogels with 10 ml/min should provide enough fluid to the gels to replace possible loss due to evaporation as we did not observe any obvious leakage of our bioreactors.…”

Transparent Conductive Supramolecular Hydrogels with Stimuli‐Responsive Properties for On‐Demand Dissolvable Diabetic Foot Wound Dressings

“…The repeated dressing changes not only cause additional trauma to the newly formed tissues but also bring personal suffering in the injured patient. [21][22][23] Thus, hydrogels with on-demand dissolvable property are particularly appealing to improve treatments and reduce patient pain. It is anticipated the PVA-CEC-AGA/Ag hydrogels have the capability to be dissolved on-demand via the reversible nature of boronate formation.…”