Puerarin-Loaded Radially Aligned Tussah Silk/Chitosan/Graphene Oxide Nanofibrous Scaffolds for Enhanced Wound Healing.

Abstract

Wound healing remains a critical clinical challenge due to uncontrolled bleeding, bacterial infections, poor vascularization, and cell migration at damaged tissue sites. To address this challenge, we developed a radially structured, multifunctional biomimetic scaffold. Tussah silk was subjected to physical shearing and alkaline hydrolysis treatment to obtain tussah silk nanofibers (TSn). The TSn, chitosan (CS), and graphene oxide (GO) were then processed into radially aligned TSn/CS/GO scaffolds. These anisotropic composite scaffolds demonstrated not only antibacterial activity and rapid hemostatic properties but also effectively guided cell migration from the wound periphery toward the center. To achieve multifunctionality, including antioxidant activity, enhanced cell migration, and vascularization, the central void of the TSn/CS/GO scaffold was filled with a silk fibroin hydrogel integrated with Puerarin (PUE). In vivo studies using rat models confirmed that the TSn/CS/GO@PUE3 scaffold significantly accelerated wound healing (99.98 ± 0.02%), angiogenesis (the positive expression rates of CD31 and α-SMA were 21.66 ± 0.74% and 41.28 ± 1.09%, respectively), and collagen deposition (75.26 ± 2.10%). This study thus provides a valuable strategy for developing multifunctional biomimetic scaffolds to accelerate wound repair.