Abstract

An ideal wound dressing material should be biocompatible, able to protect the wound from bacterial infections, prevent excessive fluid loss and maintain a moist healing environment [1]. This material should contain multiple ‘active’ therapeutic molecules at the same time. Nanogel drug delivery systems are able to protect effectively active substances from oxidation and degradation [2], therefore macromolecular drugs and therapeutic agents such as siRNA [3-5], DNA [6] and oligonucleotides [7,8] can be stably loaded into these systems. On this purpose, we preliminary prepared and characterized several commercial (Pluronic-F127 and Ca2+-crosslinked alginate), and synthetic bio-gels (Gelatin-, chitosan- and chondroitin sulphate-methacrylates) containing iron nanoparticles and miRNAs. We analyzed the differences of these biogels and demonstrated their ability to retain the iron oxide nanoparticles within their bulk structure and release miRNAs at the same time. Preliminary results showed the great ability of alginate to entrap both iron oxide nanoparticles and microRNA, and the efficiency of GelMA and pluronic biogels to differently release microRNAs and NPs. Moreover, these hydrogels are also able to heat by electromagnetic irradiation, owing to the presence of iron oxide NPs. These biogels have therefore multifunctional properties and by modulating each of these properties is it possible to create even more complex systems. References:. 1. Purna SK et al., Burns. 2000 Feb;26(1):54-62. 2. Kabanov AV et al., Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2009;48(30):5418-29. 3. Lee H et al., J Control Release. 2007 Jun 4;119(2):245-52. Epub 2007 Feb 27. 4. Dickerson EB et al., BMC Cancer. 2010 Jan 11;10:10. 5. Kim C et al., Macromolecu