A stretchy bandage that can monitor wounds, release drugs as needed and perform electrical stimulation has been shown to accelerate healing in rodents.
at the California Institute of Technology and his colleagues have developed the smart sticking plaster from a flexible printed circuit board. The dressing, which is just a few centimetres long, contains electrochemical sensors that analyse a range of biomarkers, including temperature and pH, to provide information on whether a wound is clean and healing healthily.
You can view the readings it picks up using a smartphone app. Then, if needed, you can wirelessly send a signal back to activate its store of an electroactive hydrogel containing an anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial peptide to clean the wound.
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Two tiny electrodes within the patch release small amounts of the drug when prompted, as well as occasionally stimulating the skin with electricity, which to encourage wound healing.
Combining therapies for drug delivery and electrostimulation in this way speeds up the healing process, says Gao.
He and his colleagues tested the dressing on lab rats, placing it over wounds between 10 and 35 millimetres in diameter. Animals wearing it had better healed wounds after 14 days than rats that had no treatment, just electric stimulation or just the drug.
The bandage is designed to be able to operate in wet environments, despite having electrical components, because wounds are most likely to be wet themselves, says Gao.
Gao foresees the dressing being useful for difficult wounds in humans 鈥� for instance, for people with diabetes, whose injuries often take a long time to heal. 鈥淲e think this could be very beneficial for patients,鈥� he says.
But to do that, he says the biosensor within the patch may need to last for longer and contain more drugs, so it works on larger human wounds.
at the University of Manchester, UK, also says more work is required before this is used on people. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really interesting experimental research, but on the translational pathway, it鈥檚 obviously some steps away from the bedside and evaluation.鈥�
Science Advances
