Keratose Self-Cross-Linked Wound Dressing for Iron Sequestration in Chronic Wounds

Anastasia Anceschi; Alessia Patrucco; Parag Bhavsar; Marina Zoccola; Mirko Tessari; Luca Erbazzi; Paolo Zamboni

doi:10.1021/acsomega.3c02525

Keratose Self-Cross-Linked Wound Dressing for Iron Sequestration in Chronic Wounds

ACS Omega. 2023 Aug 8;8(33):30118-30128. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.3c02525. eCollection 2023 Aug 22.

Authors

Anastasia Anceschi¹, Alessia Patrucco¹, Parag Bhavsar¹, Marina Zoccola¹, Mirko Tessari², Luca Erbazzi², Paolo Zamboni²

Affiliations

¹ CNR-STIIMA, Italian National Research Council, Institute of Intelligent Industrial Technologies and Systems for Advanced Manufacturing, Corso G. Pella 16, 13900 Biella, Italy.
² Vascular Diseases Center, University of Ferrara, 44121 Ferrara, Italy.

Abstract

Chronic wound diseases affect a large part of the world population, and therefore, novel treatments are becoming fundamental. People with chronic wounds show high iron and protease levels due to genetic disorders or other comorbidities. Since it was demonstrated that iron plays an important role in chronic wounds, being responsible for oxidative processes (ROS generation), while metalloproteinases prevent wound healing by literally "eating" the growing skin, it is crucial to design an appropriate wound dressing. In this paper, a novel bioactive dressing for binding iron in chronic wounds has been produced. Wool-derived keratose wound dressing in the form of films has been prepared by casting an aqueous solution of keratoses. These films are water-soluble; therefore, in order to increase their stability, they have been made insoluble through a thermal cross-link treatment. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) analyses clarified the structure and the properties of the keratose wound dressing films. The capability of this new biomaterial in iron sequestration has been investigated by testing the adsorption of Fe³⁺ by inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). The results suggest that the keratose cross-linked films can adsorb a large amount of iron (about 85% of the average amount usually present in chronic wounds) following pseudo-second-order kinetics and an intraparticle diffusion model, thus opening new perspectives in chronic wound care. Furthermore, the QSAR Toolbox was applied for conducting in silico tests and for predicting the chemical behavior of the C-Ker-film. All of the data suggest that the keratose bioactive dressing can significantly contribute to wound healing by mechanisms such as iron depletion, acting as a radical scavenger, diminishing the proteolytic damage, acting as a substrate in place of skin, and, finally, promoting tissue regeneration.