Engineered Sandwich-Structured Composite Wound Dressings with Unidirectional Drainage and Anti-Adhesion Supporting Accelerated Wound Healing

Abstract

Proper management of exudate is of great clinical value for reducing wound infection and promoting wound healing, thus various dressings have been studied to address this widespread medical challenge. Herein, a novel sandwich-structured composite wound dressing (SCWD), integrating of a superlyophobic (SLO) polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) layer, a superlyophilic gauze layer, and a lyophobic PDMS layer is presented, with particular unidirectional droplet drainage and stable anti-adhesion capabilities, which realizes effective management of wound exudate and provides a favorable environment for wound healing. Thanks to the stable SLO property on the PDMS surface with hierarchical micro/nanostructures, the continuously accumulated wound exudate at the interface between dressing and wound surface is gradually deformed, eventually passing through SLO PDMS layer through milli-scale channels and being absorbed by gauze layer. Experimental results show that the application of SCWD can significantly reduce the occurrence of wound infection, avoid the tearing of wound tissues when replacing dressings, and accelerate wound healing by ≈20%. The combination of SCWD and lyophilized powders of stem cells supernatant (LPSCS) is verified to better accelerate the healing process. The proposed method offers great potential in clinical applications, particularly for acute trauma wound treatments.