Metronidazole Topically Immobilized Electrospun Nanofibrous Scaffold: Novel Secondary Intention Wound Healing Accelerator.

Ahmed A El-Shanshory,Hesham M A Soliman,Xiumei Mo,Mona M Agwa,El-Refaie Kenawy,Ahmed I Abd-Elhamid

doi:10.3390/polym14030454

Abstract

The process of secondary intention wound healing includes long repair and healing time. Electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds have shown potential for wound dressing. Biopolymers have gained much attention due to their remarkable characteristics such as biodegradability, biocompatibility, non-immunogenicity and nontoxicity. This study anticipated to develop a new composite metronidazole (MTZ) immobilized nanofibrous scaffold based on poly (3-hydroxy butyrate) (PHB) and Gelatin (Gel) to be utilized as a novel secondary intention wound healing accelerator. Herein, PHB and Gel were mixed together at different weight ratios to prepare polymer solutions with final concentration of (7%), loaded with two different concentrations 5% (Z1) and 10% (Z2) of MTZ. Nanofibrous scaffolds were obtained by manipulating electrospinning technique. The properties of MTZ immobilized PHB/Gel nanofibrous scaffold were evaluated (SEM, FTIR, TGA, water uptake, contact angle, porosity, mechanical properties and antibacterial activity). Additionally, in vitro cytocompatibility of the obtained nanofibrous scaffolds were assessed by using the cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8 assay). Moreover, in vivo wound healing experiments revealed that the prepared nanofibrous scaffold highly augmented the transforming growth factor (TGF-β) signaling pathway, moderately suppressed the pro-inflammatory cytokine (IL-6). These results indicate that MTZ immobilized PHB/Gel nanofibrous scaffold significantly boost accelerating secondary intention wound healing.

Highlights

Human skin is the organ most susceptible to environmental factors, and is considered to be an efficient outer most defense line protecting the body against microorganism’s infection [1,2].Generally, wound healing process passes through a series of physiological proceedings which include five major segments, coagulation, granulation tissue formation, reepithelialization and extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling [3]
A novel multifunctional nanofibrous scaffold was prepared utilizing electrospinning technique based on PHB, Gel and MTZ
PHB/Gel/MTZ nanofibrous scaffolds can effectively augment the development of fibroblasts and inhibit E. coli and S. aureus

Summary

Introduction

Human skin is the organ most susceptible to environmental factors, and is considered to be an efficient outer most defense line protecting the body against microorganism’s infection [1,2].Generally, wound healing process passes through a series of physiological proceedings which include five major segments, coagulation, granulation tissue formation, reepithelialization and extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling [3]. Multidisciplinary surgical strategies, including autograft, allograft and xenograft are employed for wound healing In spite of their success, their application has been limited due to some drawbacks such as antigenicity, bacterial infection that hinder and delay healing process [4,5]. The development of an alternative approach, wound dressings loaded with antimicrobials that protect against bacteria, accelerate wound healing and accomplish tissue regeneration has received great attention from researchers. These modern wound dressings have controlled release property of loaded antimicrobials to control bacterial growth and maintain safe concentration on tissue for accomplishing wound healing process [5,6,7]. A wide range of antibiotics and materials with antimicrobial activity have been extensively used serving as an effective wound dressing [5,6,8,9,10,11,12,13]

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Results

Conclusion