Supramolecular Hydrogels Fabricated from Supramonomers: A Novel Wound Dressing Material

Abstract

Daily repeated wound dressing changes will lead to additional trauma to newly formed tissue and prolonging the healing process. In this letter, we designed and fabricated an easily removable wound dressing material. To accomplish this, we first generated cross-linkable supramonomers through host-guest noncovalent interaction, followed by radical copolymerization of acrylamide with supramonomer as cross-linker to fabricate supramolecular hydrogels. Benefiting from the dynamic nature of the supramonomer, the supramolecular hydrogel is able to dissolve upon exposure to memantine, an FDA approved drug, making it easily removed from a wound, representing a promising candidate for the new generation of wound dressing.

Keywords: host−guest interaction; hydrogel; supramolecular material; supramonomer; wound dressing.