Researchers from Queen’s University Belfast designed a 3D-printed bandage, known as a scaffold, which presents an innovative method of treatment to heal diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs). The new discovery combines lipid nanoparticles and hydrogels, which are used to create personalized skin-like 3D printed scaffolds. These scaffolds release both a bulk and sustained release of antibiotic loaded molecules to treat diabetic ulcers.
The combination has been shown to greatly improve patient outcomes and has the added benefit of being a more sustainable, efficient, and cost-effective method of treatment as the future scaffolds can be easily produced within the hospital setting.
The use of drug-loaded scaffolds to treat DFUs has previously been shown to be successful by the same team. To create this new scaffold, the research team used a 3D bioprinting technique that combines two bioinks in one single filament.
The inner core of the filament is a nanocomposite hydrogel that contains lipid nanoparticles encapsulated with thyme oil. The outer shell of the filament is represented by a hybrid hydrogel and enriched with free thyme oil. Thyme oil and other essential oils have a promising future as an all-natural antibiotic replacement, helping address the issue of increasing incidences of antimicrobial resistance.
This combination provides two different release ratios of the drug molecule; a bulk release for the first 24 hours and a sustained release for up to ten days. This enables an initial disease prevention post-administration, which may be the highest-risk time, followed by sustained infection prevention during the following days of antimicrobial efficacy.
“This innovative, personalized, and sustainable approach provides the healing needed for the diabetic foot ulcers, to avoid any complications, and enables doctors to monitor the healing constantly,” said Dimitrios Lamprou, PhD, lead on the project and chair biofabrication and advanced manufacturing at the university. “This avoids needing to remove dressing constantly, which can provoke infection and delay the healing process. Medical professionals also do not need to change the drug dosage as this double release supports that need.”
The open-access study, “Combining microfluidics and coaxial 3D-bioprinting for the manufacturing of diabetic wound healing dressings,” was published in Biomaterials Advances.
Editor’s note: This story was adapted from materials provided by Queen’s University Belfast.
