Photosynthetic Bacterial Band-Aids for Enhanced Wounds Healing

Treating wounds with multidrug-resistant bacterial infections remains a huge and arduous challenge. In this work, we prepared a “live-drug”-encapsulated hydrogel dressing for the treatment of multidrug-resistant bacterial infections and full-thickness skin incision repair. Our live dressing was composed of photosynthetic bacteria (PSB) and extracellular matrix (ECM) gel with excellent photothermal, antibacterial and antioxidant properties, as well as good cytocompatibility and blood compatibility. More interestingly, the live PSB could be regarded as not only photothermal agents but also anti-inflammatory agents to promote wound healing owing to their antioxidant metabolites. In vitro and in vivo studies showed the PSB hydrogel not only had a high killing rate against methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) but also accelerated collagen deposition and granulation tissue formation by promoting cell proliferation and migration, which significantly promoted skin tissue regeneration and wound healing. We believe that these large-scale production of PSB Gel-based therapeutic band-aids possess the advantage of easy-to-use and promising clinical applications. Funding Information: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21977024, 21601046 and 31971304), the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Basic Research Cooperation Project (19JCZDJC64100), Cross-Disciplinary Project of Hebei University (DXK201916). One Hundred Talent Project of Hebei Province (E2018100002). Science Fund for Creative Research Groups of Nature Science Foundation of Hebei Province(B2021201038). Declaration of Interests: The authors have no competing interests to declare. Ethics Approval Statement: Animal experiments conducted in the work are in accordance with the Medical Comprehensive Experimental Center of Hebei University (Approval No. 2018004).