A Woundplast of Hydrogel Microneedles with <i>In Vivo</i> ATP-Responsive Therapeutic Logic for Bacteria-Infected Wound Healing
Yuzhu Li, Juanjuan Zhu, Cheng Wang, Mengke Su, Honglin Liu
Abstract
To reduce the overuse of antibiotics, on-demand antibiotic administration guided by rapid infection assessment is of particular importance. In this study, we present a portable, multifunctional hydrogel microneedle (MN) woundplast capable of real-time monitoring of wound adenosine triphosphate (ATP) levels and simultaneous antibacterial therapy. By leveraging the aggregation-induced emission effect, metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) coencapsulating gold nanoclusters (AuNCs) and vancomycin are integrated into the MN tips, where ATP-Zn 2+ interactions enable selective ATP recognition and quantification across 0–5 mM. The MN incorporates therapeutic logic, utilizing ATP as a pathological marker to determine the drug release kinetics within the wound microenvironment. In this process, the synergistic effect of Zn 2+ and vancomycin played an important role in achieving superior bactericidal efficacy. Moreover, the positively charged MN surface demonstrated 2.4-fold higher bacterial adsorption than neutral counterparts. In vivo experiments demonstrated that this platform both monitored infected wounds and accelerated healing, reducing wound areas to 26.6% of the control group while achieving recovery rates equivalent to noninfected conditions. This ATP-guided therapeutic platform provides a closed-loop strategy for combating antibiotic resistance in wound management.