**Fátima García-Villén 1,\*, Angela Faccendini 2, Dalila Miele 2, Marco Ruggeri 2, Rita Sánchez-Espejo 3, Ana Borrego-Sánchez 3, Pilar Cerezo 1, Silvia Rossi 2, César Viseras 1,3 and Giuseppina Sandri <sup>2</sup>**


Received: 24 April 2020; Accepted: 18 May 2020; Published: 21 May 2020

**Abstract:** Background: hydrogels prepared with natural inorganic excipients and spring waters are commonly used in medical hydrology. Design of these clay-based formulations continues to be a field scarcely addressed. Safety and wound healing properties of different fibrous nanoclay/spring water hydrogels were addressed. Methods: in vitro biocompatibility, by means of MTT assay, and wound healing properties were studied. Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy was used to study the morphology of fibroblasts during the wound healing process. Results: all the ingredients demonstrated to be biocompatible towards fibroblasts. Particularly, the formulation of nanoclays as hydrogels improved biocompatibility with respect to powder samples at the same concentration. Spring waters and hydrogels were even able to promote in vitro fibroblasts motility and, therefore, accelerate wound healing with respect to the control. Conclusion: fibrous nanoclay/spring water hydrogels proved to be skin-biocompatible and to possess a high potential as wound healing formulations. Moreover, these results open new prospects for these ingredients to be used in new therapeutic or cosmetic formulations.

**Keywords:** sepiolite; palygorskite; spring water; hydrogel; fibroblast; biocompatibility; wound healing
