Abstract

Achieving rapid healing of chronic wounds is still highly demanded. In the last few decades, exogenous administration of basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) in both clinical and preclinical investigations has proven to be therapeutically effective. However, the adverse wound environment (e.g., increased inflammation) deteriorates the functionality of bFGF. Therefore, improvements of the wound “soil” in addition to the use of bFGF is of importance to future clinical success. To address this issue, we designed an injectable host–guest drug delivery system for the controlled release of the hydrophilic bFGF alongside the hydrophobic anti-inflammatory drug, Pinocembrin (PNCB), to promote effective wound repair. The hydrophobic PNCB was first loaded into Pluronic F127 micelles ( [email protected] ) and then threaded onto bFGF-mixed α-cyclodextrin (α-CD) chains to form the host–guest hydrogel (P/ [email protected] α-CD ). The in vitro and in vivo results demonstrated that P/ [email protected] α-CD could effectively accelerate wound healing by combining the therapeutic effects of both PNCB and bFGF. The results showed the potential of combining anti-inflammatory drugs with growth factors for wound healing.