The number of patients with chronic
wounds is increasing constantly in today's aging society. However, little work is done so far tackling the associated disadvantageous shift of the
wound pH. In our study, we developed two different approaches on pH-modulating
wound dressing materials, namely, bioactive interpenetrating
polymer network
hydrogels based on
poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate/
N-vinylimidazole/
alginate (named VIx ) and
poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate/2-dimethylaminoethyl
methacrylate/
N-carboxyethylchitosan (named DMAEMAx ). Both formulations showed a good cytocompatibility and wound healing capacity in vitro. The developed dressing materials significantly increased the cell ingrowth in wounded human skin constructs; by 364% and 313% for the VIx and the DMAEMAx
hydrogel formulation, respectively. Additionally, VIx
hydrogels were found to be suitable scaffolds for superficial cell attachment. Our research on the material properties suggests that ionic interactions and hydrogen bonds are the driving forces for the mechanical and swelling properties of the examined
hydrogels. High amounts of positively charged amino groups in DMAEMAx
hydrogels caused increased liquid uptake (around 190%), whereas VIx
hydrogels showed a 10-fold higher maximum compressive stress in comparison to
hydrogels without ionizable functional groups. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A: 105A: 3360-3368, 2017.