Wound healing is a complex process with many local and systematic factors affecting it, including advancing age, local tissue oxygen tension, stress, diabetes etc. Some of these factors severely decelerates wound healing processes and lead to non-healing chronic wounds. In extreme cases affected areas are amputated such as in the case of diabetic foot ulcers. A key underlying problem in chronic wounds is the low availability of oxygen, which leads to stalled wound healing. Current clinical therapies to treat nonhealing chronic wounds are hyperbaric oxygen therapy and topical oxygen therapy, but they are not economically viable and inconvenient for the patient. Simple solutions are required to treat chronic wounds in an economically viable way to overcome the shortcomings of these currently available clinical therapies. Here, I propose a chitosanbased hydrogel incorporating perfluorocarbons (PFCs) that has been named fluorinated methacrylamide chitosan (MACF), which can supply oxygen to chronic wounds. Previous work from the Leipzig lab has demonstrated that MACF hydrogels can be loaded with oxygen and can supply it locally to oxygen-deficient environments.

This thesis presentsin vitro studies testing the potential benefits of oxygen releasing MACF hydrogels on human skin cells (human dermal fibroblasts and human epidermal keratinocytes), evaluated under both normoxic (21% O₂) and hypoxic (1% O₂) environments. Results showed that MACF improved cellular functions involved in wound healing such as cell viability (metabolism), cell migration and total cell number under hypoxic conditions in both human dermal fibroblasts and human epidermal keratinocytes. Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) quantification also revealed that MACF treatments improved cellular ATP levels significantly over controls under both normoxia and hypoxia. These studies indicate that supplying local oxygen via MACF under hypoxic environments improves cellular functions involved in wound healing processes and MACF will be a promising solution in improving chronic wound healing