A Bioelectronic Scaffold for Label-Free, Real-Time Monitoring of Wound Healing
Chronic wounds and severe burns pose a major clinical challenge, as they often heal slowly or fail to respond to conventional treatments. In addition, there is a critical lack of tools for personalized, continuous monitoring of the healing process. Although progress has been made in both regenerative biomaterials and wearable biosensors, their integration into a unified platform that enables in situ, real-time monitoring of wound healing remains a major challenge. Here, we present a multifunctional bioelectronic scaffold that combines regenerative capability with real-time sensing of cellular activity. The scaffold was fabricated by electrospinning polycaprolactone (PCL) functionalized with the bioactive, self-assembling peptide fluorenylmethoxycarbonyl-phenylalanine-arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (Fmoc-FRGD) to promote cell adhesion and proliferation. For electrical sensing, biocompatible MXene (Ti3C2TX) electrodes were conformally deposited onto the nanofibrous matrix, preserving its biological functionality. This system enables label-free, real-time monitoring of cell viability and coverage using electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), offering continuous and quantitative insight into cellular adhesion and proliferation. Extracted impedance parameters at low frequencies exhibit a strong correlation with both cell viability and coverage, providing a non-destructive indicator of wound closure and healing dynamics. This platform offers a promising strategy for advanced wound care, integrating real-time monitoring with biologically supportive materials.