Silver-doped self-assembling di-phenylalanine hydrogels as wound dressing biomaterials

Federica Paladini, Steve Meikle, Ian Cooper, Joseph Lacey, Valaria Perugini, Matteo Santin

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Chronic and acute wounds can be quickly contaminated and infected by microorganisms such as bacteria, multi-resistant organisms or fungi. The introduction of silver as anti-microbial agent into wound management has widely been demonstrated to be effective and contribute to wound healing. As a consequence, many approaches and different materials have been employed to synthesize antibacterial silver-hydrogels. In this work the introduction of silver particles into the fibrillar structure of self-assembling aromatic di-phenylalanine derivatives modified with aromatic groups such as 9-fluorenylmethoxycarbonyl (Fmoc) is proposed to produce antibacterial wound dressings. Hydrogels doped with increasing amounts of silver were tested and adopted to modify flax textiles. The influence of silver on the structure of hydrogels was studied using light and confocal microscopy, while SEM-EDX allowed the characterisation of the hydrogel coating on the surface of the textile substrates as well as the identification and distribution of silver nanoparticles. The antibacterial potential of the treated flax was demonstrated through microbiological tests on Staphylococcus aureus. The combination of the physico-chemical and anti-bacterial properties, together with the ease of preparation of these biomaterials, fulfils the requirement of clinically-effective wound dressings.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2461-2472
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of Materials Science: Materials in Medicine
Volume24
Issue number10
Publication statusPublished - 1 Oct 2013

Keywords

  • Hydrogels
  • Biomedical materials
  • Materials science
  • Wound healing
  • Silver

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