Fig. 1: Crosslinking of GelMA hydrogel dressing modulates scarring, healing dynamics and cell infiltrate of full-thickness murine skin wounds.

a Schematic of wounding studies. b Images of fixed, whole mounted wounds treated with lo- or hi-GelMA, or Sham (Tegaderm only), at PWD30. Scar outlined with yellow dashed line. n = 9 (mice). Scale bar: 1 mm. p = 0.01 (one-way ANOVA, Tukey's HSD). c Images of H&E stained PWD5 and 10 showing incorporation and degradation of lo-GelMA versus inflammation with cell aggregation and extrusion of hi-GelMA. Yellow and red boxes indicate regions that have been shown at higher magnification to the right. Yellow dashed line: epithelium-dermis and dermis-hypodermis border. Green dashed line: GelMA-dermis border. g: GelMA. Scale bar: 200 µm. Quantification of epithelial migration from wound margins defined as a percentage of re-epithelialization, and the degradation of GelMA is measured as the area of GelMA. n = 6 (mice). Re-epithelialization: p < 0.0001; GelMA area: PWD5 lo/hi: p = 0.0003, lo-GelMA PWD5/10: p = 0.0002, hi-GelMA PWD5/10: p < 0.0001 (one-way ANOVA, Tukey's HSD) d UMAP dimensional reduction representing cells categorized into nine main clusters with each cell color-coded based on its cell type. e Dot plot of total cells showing expression of canonical markers of each cell type. Dot size corresponds to the proportion of cells within the group expressing each gene, and color correspond to expression level. f Pie chart and (g) table along with bar plots showing cell populations of each cluster presented by percentages of total sequenced cells or percentages of specific cell type across treatments. Arrows indicate cell populations of interest that exhibit differential percentages between treatments. Blue shows populations enriched in Sham, orange shows populations enriched in lo-GelMA, and red shows populations enriched in hi-GelMA. All data presented as mean ± SD. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.