Bioactive glasses-incorporated, core-shell-structured polypeptide/polysaccharide nanofibrous hydrogels

Although the synthetic hydrogel materials capable of accelerating wound healing are being developed at a rapid pace, achieving inorganic-organic hybrid at nanoscale dimension in nanofibrous hydrogels is still a great challenge because of its notorious brittleness and microstructural stability in wet state. Here, we developed a new nanofibrous gelatin/bioactive glass (NF-GEL/BG) composite hydrogel by phase separation method and followed by arming the nanofibers network with counterionic chitosan-hyaluronic acid pairs for improving microstructural and thermal integrity. We achieve this feature by carrying an optimal balance of charges that allows the inorganic ion release in aqueous solution without minimal structure collapse. Therefore, such NF-GEL-based, polysaccharide-crosslinked bioactive hydrogel could afford a close biomimicry to the fibrous nanostructure and constituents of the hierarchically organized natural soft tissues to facilitate chronic, nonhealing wound treatment. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.