Incorporating Bioengineered Proteins into Wound Dressings to Create a More Synergistic Environment

Date of Award

5-12-2023

Document Type

Thesis

Department

Biology

First Reader

Dr. Sharon Hamilton

Second Reader

Dr. Timothy Hayes

Third Reader

Dr. Jay Curlin

Abstract

Wound healing is a prevalent need in medicine; in response, modern dressings have started incorporating large molecules such as proteins into polymeric materials to increase wound healing. However, using these biomolecules is costly. Synthetic analogs of these costly biomolecules should be able to maintain a favorable healing environment while helping prevent infection and encouraging cell growth at a cost that is manageable. These synthetic analogs can be incorporated into electrospun scaffolds that are applicable for sensors, tissue engineering, and drug delivery agents. Also, there has been new research into incorporating bioengineered versions of proteins into the scaffolds for release into the wound bed to better the biological processes they are a part of.

Collagen is the primary structural protein in the body and collagen-based products are suited for biomedical applications because they are biocompatible, biodegradable, and weakly antigenic. Also, chitosan, a sugar that comes from the outer skeleton of shellfish, has been shown to have antimicrobial properties. A chitosan and collagen blend has shown promise as a wound healing dressing. The modified poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) utilized in this project was designed based on the most abundant amino acids in collagen - glycine, proline, alanine, and hydroxyproline. Due to the constraints of commercially available synthetic polymers, the PAA used in this project had a lower molecular weight than that of collagen (50,000 Da) to leave room for additional amino acid substituents to be added through synthesis. This weight is good for electrospinning the PAA into nanofiber scaffolds that can have a degree of elasticity like that of traditional wound dressings.

A bioengineered protein was also of interest to be incorporated into the electrospun fiber mats. The protein used was super-human fibroblast growth factor (shFGF) and this was a protein of interest because it would help call fibroblasts to the wound bed to produce collagen with the benefit of interacting with the anti-coagulation factors less than hFGF so that clotting can occur more rapidly. The use of bioengineered proteins to enhance the way our body heals itself is of interest to many in the medical community. The protein paired with PAA could result in an environment that not only promotes wound healing but promotes it at a rate faster than would usually occur in the body.

The modified protein has changes in certain amino acid residues, and these changes are what allows the bioengineered protein to repel interaction with anti-coagulation factors that would naturally inhibit clotting. This research investigated mixtures of poly(vinyl)-alcohol(PV A) and chitosan with added sFGF-1 to see if and how the protein would release from the nanofibrous materials. The effects of fiber mats with the components mentioned above and how the protein behaves when spun into the fiber mats was tested through release studies and characterization experiments.

Comments

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