wound dressing

Due to the increasing occurrence of bacterial resistance, alternatives to antibiotics are urgently needed. The study presented here therefore aims to develop an antimicrobial chitosan film loaded with bacteriophages.

Chronic wounds represent a major burden on the quality of life of those affected. To improve their situation, multilayer films of chitosan, alginate and the fibroblast growth factor FGF2 were prepared in the presented study and their potential as wound dressings was investigated.

Deeper skin injuries require appropriate wound dressings to promote healing. In the presented study, CMC-containing hyaluronic acid-dopamine hydrogels were synthesized, characterized and investigated in vivo for their wound healing properties.

Chitin and Chitosan offer beneficial properties for wound dressing materials, like biocompatibility, biodegradability and haemostatic effects. The biopolymer source influences the properties, processing and associated impurities of the chitin. In this article, we want to present a review, which investigated the differences between crustaceans and fungi derived chitin and chitosan regarding wound healing.

The healing process of a wound injury follows the steps of hemostasis, inflammation, cell proliferation, and regeneration until complete healing of the damaged tissue. In chronic wounds, the progress of these steps is disturbed, leaving the wounds inflamed for a long time. In an aging society with bad health habits (poor diet, little exercise), the number of chronic wounds is going to increase. Therefore, the research on materials that improve wound healing is important. The publications presented below are devoted to research about chitosan-based materials for the treatment of chronic wounds.

Optimal wound healing requires restoration of the damaged tissue by formation of new tissue and epithelialization. To support this process after injury, suitable wound dressings are required to prevent development of a chronic wound. In this article, we present two recently published in vivo studies dealing with the use of chitosan-silica hybrids for wound healing.

There are various fields of application for chitosan-based hydrogels. Hydrogels can be manufactured by chemical or physical cross-linking. The hydrophilic groups of chitosan enable the absorption of water. Chitosan hydrogels are suitable as scaffold materials for tissue engineering by mimicking the extracellular matrix. Additionally an application as drug delivery system for drugs, protein or growth factors is also possible.[1] In the following, we briefly present a number of publications about the development and application of chitosan hydrogels using chitosans by HMC.

In April 2017, 252 articles about chitosan and chitosan derivatives were published. The International Journal of Biological Macromolecules published the highest number of chitosan-related articles (23), followed by Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces (7) and Carbohydrate Polymers (6). Researchers from China (48 articles) are as usually on the top of the list of leading countries in chitosan research. Germany can also be found among the top 10, with 5 publications in April 2017.