Smart Dressing

Most of us take it for granted that our injuries heal quickly. In some people, though, the repair process gets stuck and wounds take much longer to heal, leaving them vulnerable to infection. Dressings for chronic wounds prevent bacteria getting in. But now researchers have used a technique called electrospinning – in which polymer filaments 100 times thinner than a human hair are squeezed out of an electrified nozzle – to make nanofibre meshes that can draw bugs out from the wound. The size of the nanofibres is important: in lab tests, Staphylococcus aureus, attached themselves to fibres with diameters matching those of the bacteria themselves much more than to fibres with larger diameters. Because these meshes are porous and boast large surface areas, they could also be loaded with drugs to improve bacterial uptake or with proteins that encourage the production of cells involved in wound healing.

Written by Daniel Cossins

Daniel Cossins

Writer

As a freelance science writer, Dan's work has been published in award-winning magazines including BBC Focus, Wired UK, Cosmos, BBC Knowledge, BBC History and Men's Health.

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• Image by Martina Abrigo
• Swinburne Institute of Technology, Australia
• Copyright held by original author
• Research published in Macromolecular Bioscience, March 2014