Design and performance of sericin/poly(vinyl alcohol) hydrogel as a drug delivery carrier for potential wound dressing application.

Developing a non-toxic, super-absorbent and antibacterial hydrogel as a skin wound dressing is of significant importance. Sericin hydrogel is an ideal dressing material as it has excellent biocompatibility, biodegradability, moisture retention, high affinity to biomolecules, self-healing and promoting cell proliferation activity. Here, we blended silk sericin (SS) with poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) to prepare a SS/PVA hydrogel through repetitive freeze-thawing. The photoluminescence of SS/PVA hydrogel indicated PVA was well blended with sericin. SS/PVA hydrogel showed excellent hydrophilicity and swelling behavior for its porous structure. PVA blending effectively improved the thermostability of sericin and enhanced the mechanical property of sericin, but did not affect the crystallinity of sericin and PVA. SS/PVA hydrogel exhibited the ability to load and release small molecule drugs and silver nanoparticles. Cytotoxicity and immuno-toxicity assays suggested the gentamicin loaded SS/PVA hydrogel had excellent cytocompatibility on mammalian cells. Bacterial inhibition assay and wound infection model demonstrated the gentamicin loaded SS/PVA hydrogel could effectively inhibit bacterial growth, thus maintain cells viability. This novel hydrogel with antimicrobial activity has shown great potential in wound dressing. • We developed a simple, environmentally friendly method to prepare SS/PVA hydrogel with enhanced mechanical performance. • SS/PVA hydrogel had the ability of loading and releasing small molecule drugs and nanoparticles. • SS/PVA hydrogel loaded with gentamicin has excellent cytocompatibility and could effectively inhibit bacterial growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]