Herb-Functionalized Chronic Wound Dressings for Enhancing Biological Functions: Multiple Flavonoids Coordination Driven Strategy

Developing a hydrogel-based multiple plant flavonoids dressing can synergistically assist chronic wound closure and enable superior solubility and optimal therapeutic efficacy of loading flavonoids. Herein, cooperativity among plant flavonoids to enhance their biological functions is built upon co-assemblies and chirality transfer. Co-assemblies of multi-flavonoids are fabricated through noncovalent interactions between flavonoids with the same skeleton and supramolecular hydrogelators. Chirality transfer from co-assemblies to poly(vinyl alcohol) and chitosan is enabled through chain-chain noncovalent interactions, which in turn improves mechanical strength and water absorbing capacity to adapt the changes of wound. Additionally, the optimal hydrogel shows the facilitated healing process due to the matching physicochemical properties and the cooperative therapeutic effects. This study may put forward new insights to design and build a new generation of multiple therapeutic effects of hydrogel dressing to accelerate chronic wound healing by adjusting the assembly process of multiple precursors in a sophisticated cooperative strategy.