One-pot rapid preparation of long-term antioxidant and antibacterial biomedical gels based on lipoic acid and eugenol for accelerating cutaneous wound healing

Abstract

The complex battlefield environment often puts great pressure on the treatment of open wounds caused by burns and trauma, which cannot heal for a long time due to the lack of medical resources. Once wounds are not sutured and severely infected, they can lead to infective endocarditis, sepsis, and even death. Therefore, it is urgent to develop advanced dressings to replace sutures and antibiotics, which can quickly seal wounds and maintain long-term stability of antibacterial and antioxidant properties. In this study, novel biobased antibacterial adhesive gels composed of natural small molecule lipoic acid and eugenol were prepared via a one-pot solvent-free reaction for wound management. The gels were crosslinked via the ring-opening polymerization of lipoic acid and hydrogen bond interaction. Due to its structure feature, the PLA-E1 gel displayed excellent flexibility, transparency, self-healing and adhesiveness. The gel system showed long-term high antioxidant activity (95%) after exposure to air at room temperature for one year. Meanwhile, the reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenging efficacy was kept around 52%. Both trauma and burn in vivo experiments demonstrated that the PLA-E1 gel could accelerate wound healing through antibacterial, antioxidant, angiogenic and tissue regenerative effects, indicating the potential applications of cutaneous wound healing on the battlefield.