Smart wound dressing delivers antibiotics on-demand, accelerating healing and reducing resistance

Biomedical engineers from Brown University have developed a new wound dressing material that releases antibiotic drugs only when harmful bacteria are present in a wound. In the new study, published in the journal Science Advances, the researchers show that the material could help rapidly clear wound infections to accelerate healing while reducing the unnecessary use of antibiotics—a major driver of antibiotic resistance and hard-to-treat "superbug" infections that claim tens of thousands of lives worldwide each year.