A bioinspired material, developed by scientists at Imperial College London, accelerates wound healing and the repair of human skin.
The material captures the body's own healing proteins, releasing them only when repair cells pull on them, delivering healing signals precisely where and when they are needed.
In new research published in Nature Materials, the dressings helped wounds on a mouse model close faster and improved the repair of human skin tissue in laboratory tests - the first time this mechanism has been shown to work in living, repairing tissue.
Wounds like diabetic foot ulcers, burns, and traumatic injuries affect millions of people and cost the NHS billions every year. Wounds that fail to heal fully leave patients in pain and at risk of infection, putting strain on health systems.
The researchers say the approach could one day reduce the need for costly manufactured drugs by using repair molecules harvested directly from a patient's own wounds or blood.
From concept to living tissue
The work builds on an earlier Imperial discovery first published in 2019, which demonstrated the concept in simple laboratory cell cultures - a carefully controlled environment very different from the complexity of a real wound. By moving beyond cell culture into biologically complex environments, the research marks a major step towards clinical application.
By testing the material in rat bone injuries, mouse skin wounds, and living human skin maintained in the laboratory, the researchers showed that the mechanism can function in wounded tissue across different biological settings.
Dr Magdalene Ho from Imperial's Department of Bioengineering and lead author of the study said: "What excites me most is that this works in living human skin. We can see repair cells migrating into the wound dressing and confirm the material is engaging with human biology. That result makes me optimistic that this approach has a future in the clinic."
