Patterned bacterial cellulose wound dressing for hypertrophic scar inhibition behavior

Hypertrophic scar (HS) is a kind of fibroproliferative disorder with gross and inordinate fiber bundles twisted in the deep scar and it often occurs after deep dermal injury. In this paper, bacterial cellulose (BC), a good candidate for wound dressing, was modified with a stripe pattern by a simple static culture method using patterned PDMS templates in order to investigate the inhibition of cicatricial contractions. The obtained patterned bacterial celluloses (pBC) with different sizes were characterized by optical microscopy and field emission scanning electron microscopy. Different nanofiber structures were observed in bulges and depressions, indicating different cell behaviors on the pBC. In vitro experiments demonstrated that L929 cells showed a clear stripe distribution. Moreover, pBC had an obvious inhibitory effect on L929 cells proliferation, especially pBC with 10 μm stripes which was close to the size of the cells. Furthermore, in vivo experiments of injury model demonstrated that pBC effectively inhibited inflammatory response, reduced accumulation of fibroblasts, and significantly decreased the scar contraction compared to the control and standard groups, indicating its good HS inhibition effect. Compared with that for unmodified BC, the scar thickness for the pBC wound dressing significantly decreased from 428.7 ± 61.9 to 261.5 ± 89.6 µm, which was at least two times less than that of the standard and blank control groups. Excitingly, it was found that if the width of the stripes matched the size of the cell, the pBC had better anti-scar effect, which can also be extended to other dressings.