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The successful treatment of chronic dermal wounds, such as diabetic foot ulcers (DFU), depends on the development of safe, effective, and affordable regenerative tools that the surgeon can rely on to promote wound closure. Although promising, strategies that involve cell-based therapies and the local release of exogenous growth factors are costly, require very long development times, and result in modest improvements in patient outcome. We describe the development of an antioxidant shape-conforming regenerative wound dressing that uses the laminin-derived dodecapeptide A5G81 as a potent tethered cell adhesion-, proliferation-, and haptokinesis-inducing ligand to locally promote wound closure. A5G81 immobilized within a thermoresponsive citrate-based hydrogel facilitates integrin-mediated spreading, migration, and proliferation of dermal and epidermal cells, resulting in faster tissue regeneration in diabetic wounds. This peptide-hydrogel system represents a paradigm shift in dermoconductive and dermoinductive strategies for treating DFU without the need for soluble biological or pharmacological factors.
Zhu et al. (Mon,) studied this question.