Abstract
A porous structure is critically important for wound dressing or tissue engineering scaffolds. However, the influence of the pore sizes on cell proliferation, tissue regeneration and the underlying mechanism remains unclear. In this study, silicone rubber membranes with different pore sizes were prepared using certain constituents of liquid silicone rubber precursor/liquid paraffin/hexane based on our previous studies. It was found that pore size had a significant impact on cell proliferation and wound healing. The CCK8 analysis revealed that the membrane with a certain pore size (110.47 μm, middle pore membrane, MPM) was suitable for cell proliferation compared with the membranes with other pore sizes (218.03 μm, large pore membrane, LPM; 5.27 μm, small pore membrane, SPM; non-porous membrane, NPM). Further studies demonstrated that the MPM promoted cell proliferation via activating the Wnt/β-catenin signalling pathway. More importantly, wound healing experiments showed that 7 days post-wounding, the rate of wound healing was 89.25% with the MPM, which was significantly higher than with LPM, SPM or NPM. The in vivo data indicated that wound healing was accelerated by treatment with a silicone rubber membrane with a pore size of 110.47 μm. Our results strongly suggest that different pore structures might affect cell proliferation and wound healing and that a silicone rubber membrane with a specific pore size could potentially be used as a promising wound dressing. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.