Carboxymethyl chitosan–alginate hydrogel containing GSNO with the ability to nitric oxide release for diabetic wound healing

Despite significant progress in developing diabetic wound dressing, the fabrication of an ideal one that fulfills all virtual criteria, such as promoting angiogenesis, is still lacking. Given the low vascularization in chronic diabetic wounds, they have a severe and non-healing nature. In this study, Nitric oxide (NO) was used as an angiogenic agent, which also has antibacterial properties. Briefly, S-nitrosoglutathione (GSNO) as a NO-donor was physically loaded into the carboxymethyl chitosan (CMC)/sodium alginate (ALg) composite film (CMC-ALg-GSNO). The morphological evaluation via scanning electron microscope confirms the homogeneous and porous structure of the wound dressing. The water uptake and water vapor transmission for the wound dressing were 4354.1% ± 179.3% and 2753.8 ± 54.6 g m −2 per day, respectively. An in-vitro release study showed a continuous delivery of NO during 168 h. Besides, the result from the in-vivo test reveals that the CMC-ALg-GSNO wound dressing developed diabetic wound healing in a rat model compared to the CMC-ALg and gauze. Thus, this study showed that CMC-ALg-GSNO wound dressing could lead to novel therapeutic invasions to treat diabetic wounds.