Superabsorbent crosslinked bacterial cellulose biomaterials for chronic wound dressings

In this work, we present a novel ex situ modification of bacterial cellulose (BC) polymer, that significantly improves its ability to absorb water after drying. The method involves single inexpensive and easy-to-perform process BC crosslinking, using citric acid along with catalysts, such as disodium phosphate, sodium bicarbonate, ammonium bicarbonate or their mixtures. particular, the mixture phosphate was most promising, yielding greater capacity (over 5 times higher compared unmodified BC) slower release 6 BC). Further, our optimized crosslinked had over 1.5x than modern commercial dressings dedicated highly exuding wounds, while exhibiting no cytotoxic effects against fibroblast cell line L929 in vitro. Therefore, biomaterial may find application super-absorbent dressings, designed for chronic wounds imbalanced moisture level.