Transforming Vitamin C Into a Fluorinated Antioxidant Surfactant for Bioactive Nanoemulsions in Diabetic Wound Healing

Conventional surfactants excel at stabilizing nanoemulsions but remain therapeutically inert-they carry drugs but do not actively participate in therapy. An ideal surfactant should integrate delivery function with intrinsic bioactivity, yet such dual-purpose molecules are rare. Here, we transform vitamin C into a fluorinated surfactant (F-VC) via mild, short-chain fluorination, preserving its redox-active core while introducing amphiphilicity. The resulting molecule retains potent antioxidant capacity and exhibits pronounced surface activity, enabling the one-step fabrication of nanoemulsions with built-in antioxidant function-a paradigm shift from conventional inert carriers. In vitro, F-VC nanoemulsions outperform equimolar vitamin C by 43% in radical scavenging, achieve 89.4% wound closure in scratch assays, and kill up to 99% of Staphylococcus aureus. In a diabetic rat model, they drive 99% wound closure by day 14. Mechanistically, they suppress inflammatory cytokines (IL-6, TNF-α) while promoting angiogenesis markers (CD31, α-SMA). By merging therapeutic and delivery functions in a single molecular entity, F-VC simplifies formulation, efficiently encapsulates diverse oil-soluble bioactives, and establishes a new class of bioactive surfactants. This work establishes a new class of bioactive surfactants-transforming vitamin C into a functional nanomaterial at the nexus of materials science and biomedicine.