Trinary Dressing Material Formed between Polysaccharides and Gold Nanoparticles for Synergistic Wound Disinfection and Repair

Bacterial infection on wounded skin without timely treatment may cause serious complications to occur. While the frequent use of antibiotics to treat wound infections could facilitate the generation of drug-resistant biomaterials, developing antibiotic-free biomaterials for bacterial eradication has become a popular research direction. Here, we developed a dressing material that consists of a pair of two biocompatible polysaccharides, chitosan (CS) and hyaluronic acid (HA), and gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) for the simultaneous disinfection and repair of wounds. The material was sequentially formed through electrostatic interactions between CS, AuNPs, and HA. Electronic microscopy analyses indicated the encapsulation of the AuNPs into the CS/HA polysaccharide ensemble. The material was shown to eradicate a number of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial species, and the killing effect was comparable to that of clinically used antibiotics. We also demonstrated that the material could be used for disinfection and repair of mouse skin infected with different pathogenic bacteria owing to the synergistic action of AuNP@CS and HA, and preliminary biosafety assays indicated its biocompatibility.