Curcumin-loaded silk fibroin e-gel scaffolds for wound healing applications

Abstract

Recently, silk fibroin gel systems (e-gel), formed with weak electric fields have been prepared for various tissue-engineering applications such as neural, cartilage and bone. Here, we demonstrated the effectiveness of an electroresponsive silk fibroin (SF) hydrogel, which is a 3-D scaffold formed and used as a wound dressing material. SEM studies revealed that the curcumin (CUR)-loaded SF (CUR-SF) consisted of a 3-D porous structure with a porosity percent of 80% and a swelling ratio over 100%. Colony forming unit assay confirmed that CUR-SF e-gel scaffolds produced a reduction in viable bacteria compared to bare SF scaffolds. In vitro studies performed with immortalized human keratinocyte (HaCaT) indicated no toxicity of CUR-loaded SF e-gel scaffolds to healthy cells. Taking all the results together, it was suggested that the CUR-SF e-gel scaffolds could improve the wound healing activity in comparison to SF without curcumin and be potentially used as a wound dressing material.

Keywords:

• Antibacterial
• curcumin
• electrogelation
• silk fibroin
• wound dressing

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Murat Demirbilek and Eda Yalcın for technical assistance in cytocompatibility assays. The author would also like to thank Hacettepe University for support.