Wound dressing application of chitosan based bioactive compounds

Generation of immense quantity of underutilized marine processing byproducts has long been recognized as wastes and greater efforts were given to use these materials in various applications. With a great number of researches on these byproducts, some biologically active compounds were identified and implicated to the useful compounds for human utilization. Chitosan and silver nanoparticle have proven wound healing properties individually. As both have wound healing property, the combination of these two may show improvement in wound healing activity. Thus, the composite were evaluated for various in vitro evaluation tests to ascertain the applicability of prepared combination for wound healing activity. These films were evaluated for water absorption capacity, antibacterial activity, tensile strength and in vivo wound healing studies by excision wound model using albino rats. The drug loaded films have shown significant difference in water absorption capacity and antibacterial activity when compared to optimized blank composite film. There was no significant difference in tensile strength of drug loaded films when compared to blank composite films. Percentage of wound contraction was better for wounds treated with gentamycin loaded composite film than blank composite film. With the above results, it was concluded that gentamycin loaded Chitosan-Cellulose-Silver nanoparticle composite(C-Ch-Ag) films had shown more wound healing properties than Chitosan-Cellulose-Silver nanoparticle blank composite film. Key-Words: Bioactive compounds, Chitosan, Cellulose, Silver nanoparticle, Antibacterial, Wound healing, Tensile strength. Introduction Biomaterials are natural polymers and biodegradable. These are used in regenerative medicine, implantable materials, controlled release carriers or scaffolds for tissue engineering. Cellulose, chitin and chitosan are widely used natural polymers. Natural polymers when used as drug delivery carriers are degraded into biologically accepted compounds, often through the process of hydrolysis, which leave the incorporated medications behind. The major advantages of natural polymers are good cytocompatibility, biodegradable and do not require any surgery for removal of polymers.Important category of byproducts from marine bioprocessing plants includes crustacean shells and shellfish wastes. Efficient utilization of these marine byproducts also becomes an environmental priority due to increased quantity of accumulation from processing plants as well as slow natural degradation of these materials. * Corresponding Author: E-mail: [email protected] Mob.: +91-9894785632 Chitin is one of major structural components of these shell wastes and can be identified as a biologically active polysaccharide and thus valuable for many applications. These shell wastes are potential sources to isolate chitin and are currently utilized for the commercial-scale chitin production as well as production of chitosan. Chitosan is nontoxic, biocompatible, 4-6 biodegradable polymer. 3, 5&6 It is used in drug delivery, cell delivery systems, orthopedics, wound healing, ophthalmology, and bone healing.It enhances the function of polymorphonuclear cells, macrophages and fibroblastic proliferation and migration. It exhibits antimicrobial activity against bacteria, fungi, and yeast. It is hypoallergenic, haemostatic, has rapid blood clotting property and acts as fat attractor by binding to dietary lipids. Research Article [Ahamed & Sastry, 2(8): Aug., 2011]