TY - JOUR T1 - Superabsorbent crosslinked bacterial cellulose biomaterials for chronic wound dressings JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2020.03.04.975003 SP - 2020.03.04.975003 AU - Daria Ciecholewska-Juśko AU - Anna Żywicka AU - Adam Junka AU - Radosław Drozd AU - Peter Sobolewski AU - Paweł Migdał AU - Urszula Kowalska AU - Monika Toporkiewicz AU - Karol Fijałkowski Y1 - 2020/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/03/05/2020.03.04.975003.abstract N2 - In this work, we present novel ex situ modification of bacterial cellulose (BC) polymer, that significantly improves its ability to absorb water after drying. The method involves a single inexpensive and easy-to-perform process of BC crosslinking, using citric acid along with catalysts, such as disodium phosphate, sodium bicarbonate, ammonia or their mixtures. In particular, the mixture of disodium phosphate and sodium bicarbonate was the most promising, yielding significantly greater water capacity (over 5 times higher as compared to the unmodified BC) and slower water release (over 6 times as compared to the unmodified BC). Further, our optimized crosslinked BC had over 1.5x higher water capacity than modern commercial dressings dedicated to highly exuding wounds, while exhibiting no cytotoxic effects against fibroblast cell line L929 in vitro. Therefore, our novel BC biomaterial may find application in super-absorbent dressings, designed for chronic wounds with imbalanced moisture level.BCbacterial celluloseCATcatalystCAcitric acidM1modification with disodium phosphate as a catalyst (CAT)M2modification with sodium bicarbonate as a CATM3modification with mixture of disodium phosphate and sodium bicarbonate in the ratio 1:1 as a CATM4modification with ammonia as a CATM5modification with disodium phosphate and ammonia in the ratio 1:1 as a CATM6modification with sodium bicarbonate and ammonia in the ratio 1:1 as a CATM7modification with sodium hypophosphite as a CATSHPsodium hypophosphiteSRswelling ratioWHCwater holding capacityWPGweight percent gain. ER -