Key Laboratory of Science & Technology of Eco-Textile, Donghua University, Ministry of Education, Shanghai 201620, China.
Biomater Sci. 2021 Jun 4;9(11):4169-4177. doi: 10.1039/d1bm00135c.
Injectable hydrogels hold promise in biomedical applications due to their noninvasive administration procedure and capacity enabling the filling of irregularly shaped defects. Protein-based hydrogels provide features including good biocompatibility and inherent biofunction. However, challenges still remain to develop a protein-based injectable hydrogel in a convenient way due to the limited active groups in proteins. Keratins are a group of cysteine-rich structural proteins found abundantly in skin and skin appendages. In this work, we utilized keratin and the Au(iii) salt to develop an injectable hydrogel based on the dynamic exchange between disulfide bonds (S-S) and gold(i)-thiolates (Au-S). Such a hydrogel could be prepared at the physiological pH and applied as an injectable hydrogel for biomedical applications including hemostatic and wound dressing materials. Our findings demonstrated that this keratin injectable hydrogel showed a good hemostatic effect in both tail amputation and liver injury models. Moreover, it was proved efficient as a drug loading carrier, and the deferoxamine-loaded hydrogel showed a desirable wound healing effect in a full-thickness excision wound model.
基于二硫键（S-S）和金（I）-硫醇（Au-S）的动态交换，利用角蛋白和 Au（III）盐开发了一种可注射水凝胶。这种水凝胶可以在生理 pH 值下制备，并作为一种可注射水凝胶应用于生物医学领域，包括止血和伤口敷料材料。我们的研究结果表明，这种角蛋白可注射水凝胶在尾切断和肝损伤模型中均表现出良好的止血效果。此外，它被证明是一种有效的药物载体，负载去铁胺的水凝胶在全层切除伤口模型中显示出良好的伤口愈合效果。
