People with diabetes often develop chronic skin ulcers on their feet, which are notoriously slow to heal and sometimes become severely infected, requiring amputation. A new magnetic gel could reportedly help prevent this from happening by making such wounds heal three times faster.


From left: Dr. LeZhicheng with the liquid magnetic gel sample, Assistant Professor Andy Tay with the pre-filled gel bandage, Dr. Shou Yufeng with the magnetic stimulation device/National University of Singapore

People with diabetic foot ulcers are often told not to put any weight on the wound because doing so kills fragile new skin cells, preventing the wound from healing. Nonetheless, some mechanical stimulation of the skin can encourage the growth of new skin cells, thereby aiding wound healing.

The situation is a bit of a paradox, so scientists from the National University of Singapore created this special hydrogel.

The newly developed material contains tiny magnetic particles and two types of skin cells approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration: keratinocytes, which play a key role in skin repair, and fibroblasts, which form connective tissue in the skin.

When the wound site is exposed to a dynamic magnetic field generated by an external device, the magnetic particles respond by moving around, but not too violently, and the cells move with them. These cells interact with the patient's own skin cells, essentially giving them a gentle yet effective workout.

The injured foot is placed into a magnetic stimulation device for two to three hours of treatment National University of Singapore

In tests on mice, gel therapy increased the growth rate of dermal fibroblasts (the main type of skin cells) by about 240% and more than doubled their rate of collagen production. The treatment also improved communication between keratinocytes and other cells, promoting the growth of new blood vessels at the wound site.

"The combination of magnetically responsive hydrogels and wireless magnetically induced dynamic mechanical stimulation solves a fundamental challenge in wound healing," said Dr. Yufeng Shou, co-first author of the Advanced Materials paper on this research. "These principles and the adaptability of our technology, as well as its general ease of use for patients, mean it can be applied to improve wound healing in a variety of conditions beyond diabetes, including burns and chronic non-diabetic ulcers."

Also involved in the study were scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Sun Yat-sen University, Wuhan University of Technology and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research.