Hydrogel wound dressings can play critical roles in wound healing protecting the wound from trauma or contamination and providing an ideal environment to support the growth of endogenous cells and promote wound closure. This work presents a self-assembling hydrogel dressing that can assist the wound repair process mimicking the hierarchical structure of skin extracellular matrix. To this aim, the co-assembly behaviour of a carboxylated variant of xyloglucan (CXG) with a peptide amphiphile (PA-H3) has been investigated to generate hierarchical constructs with tuneable molecular composition, structure, and properties. Transmission electron microscopy and circular dichroism at a low concentration shows that CXG and PA-H3 co-assemble into nanofibres by hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions and further aggregate into nanofibre bundles and networks. At a higher concentration, CXG and PA-H3 yield hydrogels that have been characterized for their morphology by scanning electron microscopy and for the mechanical properties by small-amplitude oscillatory shear rheological measurements and compression tests at different CXG/PA-H3 ratios. A preliminary biological evaluation has been carried out both in vitro with HaCat cells and in vivo in a mouse model.

中文翻译：

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羧化木葡聚糖和肽两亲物共组装在伤口愈合中的作用

水凝胶伤口敷料在伤口愈合中发挥关键作用，保护伤口免受创伤或污染，并提供理想的环境来支持内源性细胞的生长和促进伤口闭合。这项工作提出了一种自组装水凝胶敷料，可以模拟皮肤细胞外基质的分层结构，帮助伤口修复过程。为此，我们研究了木葡聚糖羧化变体 (CXG) 与肽两亲物 (PA-H3) 的共组装行为，以生成具有可调节分子组成、结构和性质的分层结构。透射电子显微镜和低浓度圆二色性表明CXG和PA-H3通过疏水和静电相互作用共组装成纳米纤维，并进一步聚集成纳米纤维束和网络。在较高浓度下，CXG 和 PA-H3 产生的水凝胶已通过扫描电子显微镜表征其形态，并通过小振幅振荡剪切流变测量和不同 CXG/PA-H3 比例的压缩测试表征机械性能。已在 HaCat 细胞体外和小鼠模型体内进行了初步生物学评估。