Mechanical, physical and biological characterization of soy protein films loaded with bupivacaine for wound healing applications

Abstract

Natural derived biopolymers such as soy protein are promising candidates for a variety of biomedical applications and attract an increasing interest of the biomedical society worldwide. In the current study, novel soy protein films loaded with the analgesic drug bupivacaine were developed and studied for the effect of the formulation parameters on their properties. They exhibited tailorable mechanical and physical properties, biocompatibility and desired drug release profile. Hence, they can potentially be useful for wound coverage applications and also for treating various conditions where local pain is involved, such as in inflammation resulting from a disease or injury.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Drug delivery
• soy protein
• wound dressing

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to the Medical Corps of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) for supporting this research and to Solbar™ (Ashdod, Israel) for kindly providing the soy protein isolate used in this study.