Abstract
Over the last 10 years great research interest has been directed toward nanofibrous architectures produced by electrospinning bioactive plant extracts. The resulting structures possess antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and anti-oxidant activity, which are attractive for biomedical applications and food industry. This review describes the diverse approaches that have been developed to produce electrospun nanofibres that are able to deliver naturally-derived chemical compounds in a controlled way and to prevent their degradation. The efficacy of those composite nanofibres as wound dressings, scaffolds for tissue engineering, and active food packaging systems will be discussed.
Highlights
The electrospinning technology, short for electrostatic spinning, has attracted great interest in recent decades, thanks to its capability of and effectively processing a huge range of polymeric materials in form of nanofibres [1]
As discussed in this review, diverse studies have demonstrated that naturally-derived bioactive agents are valid alternatives to synthetic counterparts for applications that include wound management, tissue engineering and food industry (Table 1)
The possibility to encapsulate them into polymeric nanofibres using the electrospinning technique has promoted the manufacturing of scaffolds and membranes with improved antimicrobial activity
Summary
The electrospinning technology, short for electrostatic spinning, has attracted great interest in recent decades, thanks to its capability of and effectively processing a huge range of polymeric materials in form of nanofibres [1]. It offers the possibility to form various fibre networks, including nonwoven, aligned, or patterned fibre meshes, randomly distributed three dimensional (3D) structures, sub-micron spring and convoluted fibres [3] These characteristics, together with the extremely high surface to volume ratio, make electrospun fibres the nanomaterials of election in applications such as sensors, energy, biomedicine, and filtration [4,5]. The health concerns associated with the side effects of synthetic compounds used in cosmetics, medicine, and food industry and the emergence of antibiotic resistance of pathogens have driven electrospinning research towards the development of fibres encapsulating plant extracts [6]. This review will discuss the recent achievements on electrospinning of antibacterial plant extracts, focusing on the application of the resulting composite fibres in regenerative medicine and food industry.
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