Combining Silk Sericin and Surface Micropatterns in Bacterial Cellulose Dressings to Control Fibrosis and Enhance Wound Healing

Biaou O. Ode Boni

Lallepak Lamboni Email

Bianza M. Bakadia

Saied A. Hussein

Guang Yang Email

National Engineering Research Center for Nano-Medicine, Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 1037 Luoyu Road,Wuhan, 430074, China

Abstract

Bacterial cellulose (BC) is an advantageous wound healing matrix widely utilized in dressings thanks to its interesting physical properties. Lacking bioactivity, BC has been subject to modifications for improving its biological properties. It has been modified with silk sericin (SS) mainly for its antioxidant andmitogenic effects, yielding enhanced wound healing abilities.Besides, patterned BC exhibited anti-scar behavior, inhibiting the growth of skin fibroblasts.Incorporating surface microgrooves together with SS in BC, the current study proposes dressings that would improve healing, reduce healing time, and still achieve reduced fibrosis, by controlling collagen deposition and inducingprofitable microgroove-oriented architecture.In vitro experiments demonstrated enhanced proliferation of both fibroblast and epithelial cells with alignment on the microstructured composite samples relatively to the unmodified controls. The former further led to a more contained, progressive and decreased collagen production comparatively to the unstructured control which burst-produced collagen at the beginning ensued by no significant increase in the collagen production the rest of the experiment, which could cause anarchic collagen deposition and scarring. Thus, the structured composite dressings would accelerate healing due to improved cell growth,while preventing the anarchic deposition of collagen responsible for fibrosis and scar formation through cell orientation.

Combining Silk Sericin and Surface Micropatterns in Bacterial Cellulose Dressings to Control Fibrosis and Enhance Wound Healing