Fabrication of effective mesoporous silica materials for emergency hemostasis application

Uncontrolled bleeding is an important cause of traumatic death in wartime and peacetime. Despite the significant advances in hemostatic research, it is still challenging to develop safer and more effective hemostatic agents or dressings for emergency hemostasis application. Herein, we present a mesoporous silica particle (MSP) with large mesopores (12 nm around) through a facile and relative mild approach using dual silica source. The whole blood clotting time of MSP was about 23.13% shorter than that of Celox™ Granules (chitosan powder, a famous hemostatic agent) in vitro. To further facilitate the practical use in emergency hemostasis, MSP was fixed on cotton fibers by in-situ synthesis to form the composites of mesoporous silica-cotton (MS-C). The mass fraction of mesoporous silica reached 12.05% in MS-C, and the MSP are firmly anchored onto the cotton surface with < 5% leaching after 10 min of sonication. Both MSP and MS-C showed excellent biocompatibility in cytotoxicity tests of L-929 cells. Finally, the practical hemostatic effect of these mesoporous silica materials was preliminarily tested on the mouse tail truncation hemorrhage model, MS-C showed even shorter blood clotting time (86.00 s) and less blood loss (0.02 g) than that of MSP (172.30 s, 0.07 g), besides the less residue and a cleaner wound surface. It was probably that MS-C had great potential for emergency hemostasis applications.