Hydrogel with ROS scavenging effect encapsulates BR@Zn-BTB nanoparticles for accelerating diabetic mice wound healing via multimodal therapy

Jing-Jing Hu; Xue-Zhao Yu; Shu-Qin Zhang; Yu-Xuan Zhang; Xiao-Lin Chen; Zhu-Jun Long; Hua-Zhong Hu; Deng-Hui Xie; Wen-Hua Zhang; Jin-Xiang Chen; Qun Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.106775

Hydrogel with ROS scavenging effect encapsulates BR@Zn-BTB nanoparticles for accelerating diabetic mice wound healing via multimodal therapy

iScience. 2023 Apr 29;26(6):106775. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106775. eCollection 2023 Jun 16.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Office of Clinical Trial of Drug, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Bone and Joint Degeneration Diseases, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510663, China.
² NMPA Key Laboratory for Research and Evaluation of Drug Metabolism, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of New Drug Screening, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, People's Republic of China.
³ College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, People's Republic of China.

Abstract

The strategies for eliminating excess reactive oxygen species (ROS) or suppressing inflammatory responses on the wound bed have proven effective for diabetic wound healing. In this work, a zinc-based nanoscale metal-organic framework (NMOF) functions as a carrier to deliver natural product berberine (BR) to form BR@Zn-BTB nanoparticles, which was, in turn, further encapsulated by hydrogel with ROS scavenging ability to yield a composite system of BR@Zn-BTB/Gel (denoted as BZ-Gel). The results show that BZ-Gel exhibited the controlled release of Zn²⁺ and BR in simulated physiological media to efficiently eliminated ROS and inhibited inflammation and resulted in a promising antibacterial effect. In vivo experiments further proved that BZ-Gel significantly inhibited the inflammatory response and enhanced collagen deposition, as well as to re-epithelialize the skin wound to ultimately promote wound healing in diabetic mice. Our results indicate that the ROS-responsive hydrogel coupled with BR@Zn-BTB synergistically promotes diabetic wound healing.

Keywords: Biological sciences; Diabetology; Nanoparticles.