Oxygenated Hydrogel Promotes Re-Epithelialization and Reduces Inflammation in a Perturbed Wound Model in Rat.

Chronic wounds can take months or even years to heal and require proper medical intervention. Normal wound healing processes require adequate oxygen supply. Accordingly, destroyed or inefficient vasculature leads to insufficient delivery to peripheral tissues and impair healing. Oxygen is critical for vital processes such as proliferation, collagen synthesis and antibacterial defense. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is commonly used to accelerate healing however, this can be costly and requires specialized training and equipment. Efforts have turned to the development of topical oxygen delivery systems. Oxysolutions has developed oxygenated gels (P407, P407/P188, nanocellulose based gel (NCG)) with high levels of dissolved oxygen. This study aims to evaluate the efficacy of these newly developed oxygenated products by assessing their impact on healing rates in a rat perturbed wound model. Here, P407/P188 oxygenated gels demonstrated greater re-epithelialization distances compared to its controls at Day 3. In addition, all oxygenated gels had a higher proportion of wounds with complete wound closure. All three oxygenated gels also minimized further escalation in inflammation from Day 3 to Day 10. This highlights the potential of this newly-developed oxygenated gels as an alternative to existing oxygen therapies.