UCLA

Traumatic injury is a leading cause of death worldwide whose treatment process is riddled with medical complications including hemorrhage and infection. Biomaterials that have recently been developed for wound treatment often neglect to take these hurdles into account or lack important characteristics, such as biocompatibility, biodegradability, and adhesion to bleeding tissue surfaces. In this work, we synthesized a multifunctional gelatin-based hydrogel for hemorrhage control that retained mechanical characteristics suitable for use on dynamic and elastic surfaces such as skin or motive internal organs such as lungs and heart. The designed multifunctional hydrogel also exhibited robust adhesion to wet tissue surfaces, strong antibacterial resistance to both gram-negative and gram-positive strains, and significant hemostatic ability. The mussel-inspired, catechol-based adhesion mechanism relied on conjugating chemically modified dopamine to a chemically modified gelatin that produced a photocrosslinkable hydrogel platform. Lastly, cationic polyelectrolyte poly-(diallyldimethylammonium chloride) was incorporated into the polymer matrix to provide a high charge density that exponentially induced antibacterial resistance and hemostatic properties to the resulting hydrogel network.