posted on 2022-12-20, 17:06authored byMarcel Walther, Pia Katharina Vestweber, Shafreena Kühn, Ulrich Rieger, Jasmin Schäfer, Christian Münch, Sarah Vogel-Kindgen, Viktoria Planz, Maike Windbergs
Effective therapy
of wounds is difficult, especially
for chronic,
non-healing wounds, and novel therapeutics are urgently needed. This
challenge can be addressed with bioactive wound dressings providing
a microenvironment and facilitating cell proliferation and migration,
ideally incorporating actives, which initiate and/or progress effective
healing upon release. In this context, electrospun scaffolds loaded
with growth factors emerged as promising wound dressings due to their
biocompatibility, similarity to the extracellular matrix, and potential
for controlled drug release. In this study, electrospun core–shell
fibers were designed composed of a combination of polycaprolactone
and polyethylene oxide. Insulin, a proteohormone with growth factor
characteristics, was successfully incorporated into the core and was
released in a controlled manner. The fibers exhibited favorable mechanical
properties and a surface guiding cell migration for wound closure
in combination with a high uptake capacity for wound exudate. Biocompatibility
and significant wound healing effects were shown in interaction studies
with human skin cells. As a new approach, analysis of the wound proteome
in treated ex vivo human skin wounds clearly demonstrated a remarkable
increase in wound healing biomarkers. Based on these findings, insulin-loaded
electrospun wound dressings bear a high potential as effective wound
healing therapeutics overcoming current challenges in the clinics.