Sustained Activity of Stimuli-Responsive Curcumin and Acemannan Based Hydrogel Patches in Wound Healing

Abstract

Natural plant extract, namely acemannan (Ac) and curcumin (Cur), coencapsulated pluronic micelles, showing thermoresponsive properties, were designed for efficient and safe in vivo wound healing applications. Ac and Cur, widely used antimicrobials, find limited applications because of their low stability, short biological half-life, poor solubility, and low bioavailability. Herein, we report the extraction of Ac from aloe vera and coencapsulation of it with Cur in pluronic micelles to take advantage of the combined effects of both components. Both Ac and Cur preserved their bioactive functionality upon encapsulation. Single photon emission computed tomography imaging confirmed that NPAcC2 hydrogel masked the whole wound by forming a layer. Cur and Ac synergistically resulted in rapid wound closure on the seventh day, and full-grown hair was observed on the 10th day. Individually they both take more than 20 days for wound closure. The increase in the concentration of curcumin increases the healing properties of the material. For days 1, 6, and 10 of the wound dressing experiment, the percentages of wound closure of the mice were the highest for NPAcC2 (i.e., 100%) compared to the untreated control (25%) while maintaining the integrity of the skin. These natural product-based hydrogels have limited side effects vs those caused by commercial drugs in wound healing.

Different Curcumin-Loaded Delivery Systems for Wound Healing Applications: A Comprehensive Review

“…Secondly, the stimuli-responsive properties of some polymers can aid in the preparation of drug-loaded nanohydrogels with controlled and targeted drug release in response to certain stimuli (temperature, pH, light, etc.) [ 88 , 91 , 92 , 93 , 94 , 95 , 96 ].…”

Photo-responsive polymeric micelles for the light-triggered release of curcumin targeting antimicrobial activity

“…The zeta potential of PRP micelles was slightly negative and can be attributed to the electrical surface of the PEG segment of PRP 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1132781 Frontiers in Microbiology frontiersin.org (Shi et al, 2021). A high surface charge is important for the stability of the nanoformulation promoted by electrostatic repulsion between the nanoparticles (Sharma et al, 2022). Therefore, the surface charge of the micelles observed in our study could be considered a limitation and, for this reason, all biological assays were performed immediately after the synthesis of the micelles.…”

The Effects of Fresh and Commercial Aloe Vera Gel on IL6 Gene Expression in the Rabbits After Oral Mucosal Tissue Burning

“…Four groups of twelve rabbits each were formed from the forty-eight total. Twelve rabbits were slaughtered for each treatment period after each group was separated into three (3), seven (7), and fourteen ( 14) days. 2-The control positive group consists of 12 rabbits that had their oral mucosal (buccal) tissue burned without any treatment.…”

“…Neutrophils can be produced later in addition to the second-wave cytokines, which typically have chemotactic properties like IL-6 and IL-8. Localized inflammation and its systemic effects may result from the cascade release of those secondary cytokines and hormone factors [7]. Except during infections, trauma, or other stressful situations, interleukin-6 (IL-6) is a proinflammatory cytokine that is strictly regulated and expressed at low levels.…”