PROTEASES ENTRAPPED IN POLYMER COMPOSITE HYDROGELS: PREPARATION METHODS AND APPLICATIONS

Methods for entrapment of proteases in magnetic polymer beads have been developed. Entrapped trypsin and carboxypeptidase B (CPB) were shown to retain 80 and 65% of their initial activities, respectively. As a polymer matrix synthetic temperature-sensitive polymer, namely poly(N-vinyl caprolactam), and various natural and modied polymers (alginate, chitosan, chitosan sulfate) were used. On the base of these polymers dressings (hydrogel lms) with entrapped thrombin and peptides that mimic thrombin and trypsin action were prepared. Film-entrapped thrombin and the peptides (thrombin receptor agonist peptide TRAP-6 and trypsin receptor agonist peptide Ag-PAR-2) were found to markedly accelerate healing of skin incisional wounds in a mouse model. This was conrmed by a marked decrease of wound sizes in experimental animal groups (mice having lms with entrapped thrombin or peptides) compared to a control animal group (lms without thrombin or peptides). Accelerating broblast proliferation and neovascularization in granulation tissue samples also gave evidence of stimulating eect of lm-entrapped