l-Arginine based polyester amide/hyaluronic acid hybrid hydrogel with dual anti-inflammation and antioxidant functions for accelerated wound healing

Nowadays, there are still many challenges to skin regeneration. As a new type of skin substitute, hydrogel has emerging gradually with its excellent properties. However, it is still a challenge to combine with biological active agents to facilitate skin regeneration. Under the circumstance, we synthesized arginine-based poly(ester amide) (Arg-PEA) and hyaluronic acid (HA-MA), and combined them into new hybrid hydrogels via photo-crosslinking. We found that the internal structure and physicochemical properties of hybrid hydrogels were greatly improved with the increase of content of Arg-PEA. Therefore, we designed hybrid hydrogels with 5 wt% and 10 wt% of Arg-PEA content, respectively. Besides, we selected the corresponding anti-inflammatory (CRP, TNF-α) indicators to detect the anti-inflammatory properties of the hybrid hydrogels at the protein level, and the corresponding antioxidant indicators (SOD, GSH/GSSG, MDA) were selected to investigate the antioxidant properties of hybrid hydrogels at the cellular level in vitro. In addition, we also selected relevant genes to test the effect of hybrid hydrogels on fibrosis and vascularization in the process of skin wound healing in vitro and verified them in vivo with a mouse dorsum wound model. The results confirmed that Arg-PEA/HA-MA (AH) hybrid hydrogel was a prospective scaffold material for skin regeneration.