Development of a banana stem fiber-reinforced chitosan–xanthan gum wound healing patch loaded with Tridax procumbens extract for biomedical applications
摘要
Wound dressings, both in woven and non-woven forms, play a prominent role in wound healing. Traditionally, wound dressings are used for shielding wounds and absorbing exudates thus, protecting wound from infection. Recently, nature derived biopolymer wound dressings are emerging as potential materials that promote wound healing, in addition to protecting wounds. These polymeric wound dressing pose numerous limitations like lack of strength, inability to absorb excess exudate and difficulty in loading drugs when used individually in their native form. However, integrating different polymers to form Interpenetrating Polymeric Networks (IPNs) enable harvesting synergistic benefits. This paper presents one such novel bio-composite wound healing patch developed from hydrogel integration with banana pseudo stem fiber, chitosan and xanthan gum. The patch is loaded with natural extract from Tridax procumbens which is a known traditional wound healing drug. The developed IPN patch is characterized for physicochemical properties and its biological activities are validated. SEM results reveal that the bio-composite patch has slightly rough morphology with uniformly dispersed fiber in biopolymer matrix, XRD results demonstrated a crystallinity index of ~ 78.43%, and integration of various bio-active ingredients is validated from FTIR results. The wound healing bio-composite patch exhibited 60% antioxidant activity with an IC50 value of ~ 7.67 µg/ml. Further, scratch assay on L929 fibroblast cells revealed that the patch could achieve 78% wound closure in 24 h with 25 µg/ml concentration of drug and MTT assay on L929 fibroblast cells results confirmed cell viability of 75% with a concentration of 5 µg/ml of extract. These results demonstrate that the developed bio-composite patch could emerge as a potential wound healing material.