Fabrication of composite hydrogels from Carrageenan-cl-carboxymethyl chitosan-PVA incorporated ZiF-8 for wound healing applications

The skin is the largest organ of the human body, protecting it from the external environment and pathogens and minimizing the risk of injury. Hydrogels have attracted a lot of interest lately because of their biomimetic structure and inherent extracellular matrix characteristics. Hydrogels hold great promise for application in wound healing, mainly because they can very conveniently provide bioactive ingredients. In this work, composite hydrogels were developed for wound healing from carrageenan, polyvinyl alcohol, and carboxymethyl chitosan by blending method. These hydrogels were characterized by advanced techniques such as FTIR, XRD, DSC, and SEM-EDX, which were used to study their structural, thermal, surface morphology, and elemental behavior. Their physiochemical analyses were performed using swelling degradation, water contact angle, and gel fraction. The increasing ZiF-8 causes more surface roughness, with decreased swelling in different media (Aqueous>PBS>NaCl). The increasing ZiF-8 amount causes less hydrophilic behavior and biodegradation with increasing gel fraction. The cytocompatibility of ZiF-8-based composite hydrogels and their potential antibacterial activities were performed against Gram-positive and Gram-negative, which were enhanced with increasing ZiF-8. The increasing ZiF-8 caused more cell viability and proliferation with proper cell morphology and enhanced in vivo wound healing. Hence, the results show that synthesized composite hydrogels may be a potential candidate for numerous wound repair applications.