Conductive, Self-Healing, Adhesive, and Antibacterial Hydrogels Based on Lignin/Cellulose for Rapid MRSA-Infected Wound Repairing

The abuse of antibiotics induces the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria, which greatly increases the difficulty of clinical treatment of infected wounds. It is urgent to design a multifunctional wound dressing independent of antibiotics. In this work, we designed multifunctional hydrogels based on lignin and cellulose in natural polymers. Lignin with antioxidant properties could reduce silver nanoparticles in situ and could also be used as a crosslinking agent to construct hydrogels between hydroxypropyl cellulose modified with phenylboric acid by a dynamic borate bond. Hydrogels have excellent properties such as self-healing, shape adaptability, biocompatibility, blood compatibility, antioxidant properties, excellent broad-spectrum antimicrobial properties, good tissue adhesion, and electrical conductivity. The tissue adhesion of hydrogels endows them with an excellent hemostasis property in a rat liver injury model. In vivo experiments demonstrated that hydrogels can maintain a moist healing environment, reduce inflammatory cell infiltration, promote M2 macrophage polarization, accelerate collagen deposition, promote the regeneration of new blood vessels, and significantly speed up the wound healing of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)-infected wounds. Therefore, these multifunctional hydrogels are an excellent candidate to treat multiple stages of wound healing and have a broad application prospect in the medical field.