An injectable self-healing coordinative hydrogel with antibacterial and angiogenic properties for diabetic skin wound repair

Abstract We report here an injectable, self-healing coordinative hydrogel with antibacterial and angiogenic properties for diabetic wound regeneration. The hydrogel was prepared by coordinative cross-linking of multi-arm thiolated polyethylene glycol (SH-PEG) with silver nitrate (AgNO3). Due to the dynamic nature of Ag-S coordination bond and bacteria-killing activity of Ag+, the resultant coordinative hydrogel featured self-healing, injectable and antibacterial properties. In this study, we synchronously loaded an angiogenic drug, desferrioxamine (DFO), in the coordinative hydrogel during cross-linking. We finally obtained a multifunctional hydrogel that is manageable, resistant to mechanical irritation, antibacterial and angiogenic in vitro. Our in vivo studies further demonstrated that the injectable self-healing hydrogel could efficiently repair diabetic skin wounds with low bacteria-infection and enhance angiogenic activity. In short, besides diabetic skin wound repair, such dynamic multifunctional hydrogel scaffolds would show great promise in the regeneration of different types of exposed wounds, in particular, in situations with disturbed physiological functions, high risk of bacterial infections, and external mechanical irritation.