Radiation crosslinked hydrogels with egg white proteins for wound healing

During the wound healing process, various physiological conditions, such as diabetes, might disrupt the complex interactions between cytokines, growth factors, blood, and the extracellular matrix, leading to chronic wound healing. [1] In such cases, an excessive inflammatory response hinders the growth of healthy tissue, increasing the risk of serious infections which can also result in an amputation. If not treated properly, chronic wound might even be life-threatening. [2] Egg white proteins, such as ovalbumin, ovotransferrin and lysozyme, are attracting interest especially because of their demonstrated antioxidant and antibacterial activities. [3] These bioactive proteins can then be used to enrich advanced wound dressing films that can help control wound oxidative stress and thereby accelerate wound healing and/or prevent bacterial infection. Wound dressing films can be easily produced crosslinking polymers, such as polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) or polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP), by high-energy radiation. [4] This technique the use of costly initiators and catalysts, and, depending on the irradiation doses, it can ensure the simultaneous sterilisation of products. PVA hydrogels obtained by irradiation are also transparent, a desirable property for wound dressings. When PVA is mixed with selected polysaccharides, the hydrogel wound dressings have shown faster healing rates and scarless healing, probably due to antioxidant properties of polysaccharide fragments produced upon irradiation. [4] The aim of this work is to develop novel hydrogel formulations, based on blends of synthetic polymers and polysaccharides, and incorporating egg white proteins and/or their peptides, to investigate their applicability as advanced wound dressings.