Chinese team creates bacterial cellulose-based dressing for burn wound healing

Chinese scientists have come up with an ingenious solution to address the issue of intraoperative bleeding during the treatment of severe burns.

Researchers from Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Ruijin Hospital have created a wound dressing made from bacterial cellulose (BC) – a material prized for being breathable and body-friendly.

But its not a simple dressing – they supercharged it! By attaching the body's natural blood-clotting enzyme, thrombin, they transformed this bacterial fabric into a bioactive dressing.

Since thrombin alone washes away too quickly, scientists added a "biological glue tag" (cellulose-binding domain) to lock it onto the BC dressing. Just dip the BC into this special solution to get Thrombin-Anchored BC (T-BC).

Results published in Advanced Materials on July 22 reveal that this thrombin-anchored dressing works wonders. It halts bleeding in under 60 seconds, proves perfectly biocompatible with human skin, and even signals your body to activate self-repair pathways. This engineered biomaterial is sprinting from lab to clinic – rewriting burn care.

Renowned for high-impact science, Advanced Materials features transformative discoveries in materials that drive innovation in energy, medicine, electronics and beyond.