Abstract
Chronic and non-healing wounds show delayed and incomplete healing process, which expose the patients to a high risk of infection. These types of wounds require frequent change of dressing, which is a burden on the patients. In addition, ideal dressing needs to meet the requirements in minimizing microbial infiltration and growth while balancing moisture and exchanging oxygen with outside environment. To overcome the challenge in frequent change of dressing and meet the design requirements, current researches have focused on the development of electrospun fibers with incorporation of small molecule drugs for sustained release purpose. In this study, electrospinning was performed to fabricate blend fibers consisting of 15 wt% of polycaprolactone (PCL) and 4 wt% of chitosan (CS) at various blend ratios with the incorporation of a model small molecule drug, acetylsalicylic acid (ASA). Results showed that fibers became more hydrophilic when increasing CS concentration from 0% to 60% in PCL/CS blank fibers. Increasing CS concentration decreased fiber diameter resulting in the decrease of fiber mechanical properties. Furthermore, the addition of 10% w/w ASA also made the fibers more hydrophilic and further decreased the fiber diameter. There were no linear relationships between CS concentrations and fiber mechanical properties in the drug-loaded samples, which indicated some level of drug-polymer interactions. Fiber mechanical properties and drug release rates were two major aspects indicative of strong and/or weak drug-polymer interactions. In vitro drug release in PBS buffer solution showed a burst profile of ASA (30%) up to 2 h followed by a zero-order release rate up to 2 days.
Description
© 2023 Gizaw, Bani Mustafa and Chou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Publisher
Frontiers
Date of publication
4-6-2023
Language
english
Persistent identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/10950/4994
Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
Gizaw, Mulugeta; Mustafa, Diala Bani; and Chou, Shih-Feng, "Fabrication of drug-eluting polycaprolactone and chitosan blend microfibers for topical drug delivery applications" (2023). Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations. Paper 34.
http://hdl.handle.net/10950/4994