Biodegradable pectin-based thermo-responsive composite GO/hydrogel with mussel inspired tissue adhesion for NIR enhanced burn wound healing

Thermo-responsive hydrogels with biodegradability have great application in biomedical areas, while the Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) based hydrogels exhibiting lower critical solution temperature (LCST) around body temperature have shown promising applications in diverse areas such as drug delivery, tissue engineering, and wound repairing. In this study, PNIPAM based thermo-responsive copolymer with ketone functional group was polymerized and the LCST was regulated to body temperature, then biodegradable self-healing hydrogels with injectability were fabricated by cross-linking the thermo-responsive copolymers with dopamine functionalized pectin hydrazide (PDAH). The hydrogel exhibited good mechanical strength, excellent biocompatibility and thermo-responsive sustained drug release process. The nano-graphene oxide (GO) was incorporated to design near-infrared (NIR) sensitive nanocomposite hydrogel to serve as photothermal enhanced wound dressing with vancomycin loading. The composite hydrogel also showed pH-responsive drug release behavior and the NIR irradiation also accelerated the release rate based on photothermal induced phase transition. More importantly, the nanocomposite hydrogel with vancomycin loading and photothermal property can promoted burn wound repairing rate by inhibiting the bacterial growth. As a result, this GO composite hydrogel (GO/hydrogel) could act as NIR triggered photo-thermal enhanced drug delivery platform for promoted wound repairing in the near future.