For group 3, mixed skin cells containing forty thousand (4??104) EK and sixty thousand (6??104) DF were seeded around the hydrogel for four hours before flipping the hydrogel onto the wound site. wound healing. Introduction The skin is involved in many vital functions such as control of body temperature, keeping a balance of water and electrolyte, and detecting sensation. It is the main protective barrier of the body. Thus, when these functions are AMI5 lost through skin injury such as burns, ulcers, or trauma, instantaneous coverage is required to assist repair and restore its function1,2. Wound dressings have long been used to aid healing by providing a physical barrier against contamination, maintaining a moist wound environment, and absorbing exudates around the wound, but it cannot restore lost tissue in full-thickness wounds3. Currently, the gold standard for treatment of full-thickness injuries is usually split-skin grafting (SSG), but there are various disadvantages, including inadequate availability of healthy skin, scar formation, and risk of contamination4. Besides, cell-based skin regenerative products in the market present some limitations such as extremely high cost, the use of xenogeneic or allogeneic cells that carries the risk of rejection, and longer cell culture period1,4,5. These drawbacks led to the development of new strategies to deliver non-cultured autologous skin cells to the wound site using biomaterials such as hydrogel as a cell carrier for immediate treatment. Hydrogels are three-dimensional (3D) hydrophilic, crosslinked AMI5 polymeric networks capable of taking in a large amount of water causing it to swell while maintaining their 3D structure without dissolving6. Due to their high-water content, hydrogels are appealing as a scaffold because they resemble natural soft tissue, which includes the skin7. Many different materials in different forms have been investigated as scaffolds for skin tissue regeneration. Nicholas and co-workers described a combination of pullulan, a polysaccharide with antioxidant properties with gelatin, a collagen derivative able to absorb high amounts of water, to form AMI5 a hydrogel acting as a bilayer skin substitute5. In another study8, a freeze-dried scaffold consisting of genipin crosslinked sericin seeded with keratinocytes and fibroblasts was developed as a skin equivalent. Sericin is a component found in the cocoon of silkworm. It is antibacterial, antioxidant and non-toxic8. Besides, alginate hydrogel was used to encapsulate fibroblasts, while keratinocytes were cultured around the surface9. Alginate is similar in structure to natural glycosaminoglycan found in the extracellular matrix (ECM)10. Mazlyzam and colleagues FANCE employed autologous fibrin derived from plasma as a fully autologous skin substitute, eliminating the risk of rejection11. Bacterial cellulose-based hydrogels are attractive materials for wound dressing application due to its hydrophilic properties, purity, ability to maintain appropriate moisture balance and flexibility in conforming to any contour of the wound forming a tight barrier between the wound and the environment, thus, preventing bacterial infections12,13. It also found its place in tissue engineering application because of its biocompatibility, nontoxic effects, porous structure, and good mechanical strength12. We previously characterized and evaluated the potential of bacterial cellulose/acrylic acid (BC/AA) hydrogel as a wound dressing for partial-thickness burn wound. The hydrogel retained adequate moisture content and displayed sufficient mechanical strength with high elasticity and flexibility, properties all in favor of a wound dressing14,15. Furthermore, studies demonstrated that this wound healing rate was faster in the BC/AA hydrogel treatment group than that in the no treatment group (unfavorable control) and Intrasite Conformable? hydrogel treatment group (positive control) based on gross appearance and histological evaluation14. Additionally, the BC/AA hydrogel did not induce skin irritation on rabbits or skin sensitivity on guinea pigs15. Bacterial cellulose is usually nonbiodegradable in the human body because of the absence of cellulase enzyme16. Based on this, the previous abovementioned potential scaffold properties, and promising results of our previous studies14,15, BC/AA hydrogel may act both as a.
