Bioactive therapeutics-repair-enabled citrate-iron hydrogel scaffolds for efficient post-surgical skin cancer treatment

The post-surgical tumor recurrence and tissue defect are still the challenge in clinical treatment. The conventional separated chemotherapy and tissue repair strategies are usually showing the high cost and low efficiency. Herein, we report a multifunctional bioactive therapeutics-repair-enabled citrate-iron hydrogel scaffold (GPDF) for efficient post-surgical skin cancer treatment. GPDF scaffolds possess the inherent injectable self-healing antioxidative photothermal UV-shielding capacities to achieve the purpose of inhibiting tumor recurrence and enhancing wound repair at the same time. The GPDF with double network was fabricated by photo-crosslinking of gelatin in the presence of polycitrate-dopamine (PCD) and Fe3+ ions, in which PCD could chelate with Fe3+ ions to form the dynamic coordination bond, leading to the injectable and self-healing performance of the hydrogel. The PCD-Fe3+ showed the reinforced photothermal response and ultrahigh efficiency on inhibiting post-surgical tumor recurrence (100%). The PCD enabled the pronounced antioxidation performance of GPDF, which greatly promoted the wound repair and regeneration through decreasing the inflammation response and improving angiogenesis. This work suggests that the rational design of molecular hybrid biomaterials with multifunctional properties could efficiently treat the clinical challenge in post-surgical tumor recurrence and tissue regeneration.