Turning Expanded Poly(tetrafluoroethylene) Membranes into Potential Skin Wound Dressings by Grafting a Bioinert Epoxylated PEGMA Copolymer

Despite a set of properties ideal to the design of wound dressings, bioinert membranes are seldom applied as wound-healing systems. This work presents a unique series of random copolymers of glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) and poly­(ethylene glycol) methacrylate (PEGMA), namely GMA-r-PEGMA, used to surface-modify by grafting onto method polytetrafluorethylene membranes, with the aim of developing wound dressings for quick and efficient wound closure. It is shown that the membrane modified with G50P50 copolymer combines high surface hydrophilicity, high porosity, protein resistance, bacterial resistance, and hemocompatibility, essential properties to wound dressings. Fibrinogen adsorption was measured to be 11.4 ± 3.9% (compared with virgin membrane) correlating with a low water contact angle (14°), whereas the attachment of fluorescent Escherichia coli after 24 h, erythrocytes, leukocytes, thrombocytes, and cells from whole blood was reduced by 85–90%, compared with the virgin membrane. G50P50 membrane was tested as a wound dressing, which outperformed hydrophilic gels of PEGMA in terms of wound-closure kinetic and a commercial dressing in terms of homogeneity of the granulation layer. The facile surface-modification of ePTFE membrane using unique GMA-r-PEGMA copolymer leads to an antibiofouling porous material with improved hemocompatibility combining numerous essential properties of wound dressings and contributing toward the development of the ideal bandage.