Soy Protein-Based Wound Dressings: A Review of Their Preparation, Properties, and Perspectives

Wound healing is a major challenge worldwide, and people have been researching wound dressings that can promote wound healing for decades. Natural biobased materials, such as polysaccharides and proteins, have been widely used in the development of wound dressings. Among them, soy protein-based materials have attracted the interest of a wide range of researchers due to their safety, biocompatibility, controlled degradation, and ability to be mixed with other materials. However, there has been a lack of comments on these soy protein-based wound dressings. This work reviews various forms of soy protein-based wound dressings, such as hydrogels, films, and others, which could be prepared through physical/chemical cross-linking with synthetic or natural polymers. The important role played by soy protein-based materials in the wound healing phase and their properties will be examined, such as their anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, angiogenesis-promoting, cellular biocompatibility, self-healing ability, adhesion, antimicrobial, and tunable mechanical properties. Additionally, insights into the market prospects and trends for soy protein dressings are provided, clarifying the enormous development potential of soy protein as a new type of wound repair material.

Evolving Trends in Nanofibers for Topical Delivery of Therapeutics in Skin Disorders

Nanotechnology has yielded nanostructure-based drug delivery approaches, among which nanofibers have been explored and researched for the potential topical delivery of therapeutics. Nanofibers are filaments or thread-like structures in the nanometer size range that are fabricated using various polymers, such as natural or synthetic polymers or their combination. The size or diameter of the nanofibers depends upon the polymers, the techniques of preparation, and the design specification. The four major processing techniques, phase separation, self-assembly, template synthesis, and electrospinning, are most commonly used for the fabrication of nanofibers. Nanofibers have a unique structure that needs a multimethod approach to study their morphology and characterization parameters. They are gaining attention as drug delivery carriers, and the substantially vast surface area of the skin makes it a potentially promising strategy for topical drug products for various skin disorders such as psoriasis, skin cancers, skin wounds, bacterial and fungal infections, etc. However, the large-scale production of nanofibers with desired properties remains challenging, as the widely used electrospinning processes have certain limitations, such as poor yield, use of high voltage, and difficulty in achieving in situ nanofiber deposition on various substrates. This review highlights the insights into fabrication strategies, applications, recent clinical trials, and patents of nanofibers for different skin disorders in detail. Additionally, it discusses case studies of its effective utilization in the treatment of various skin disorders for a better understanding for readers.

Supercritical Impregnation of Mesoglycan and Lactoferrin on Polyurethane Electrospun Fibers for Wound Healing Applications

Fibrous membranes of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) were fabricated through a uni-axial electrospinning process. Fibers were then separately charged with two pharmacological agents, mesoglycan (MSG) and lactoferrin (LF), by supercritical CO₂ impregnation. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS) analysis proved the formation of a micrometric structure with a homogeneous distribution of mesoglycan and lactoferrin. Besides, the degree of retention is calculated in four liquid media with different pHs. At the same time, angle contact analysis proved the formation of a hydrophobic membrane loaded with MSG and a hydrophilic LF-loaded one. The impregnation kinetics demonstrated a maximum loaded amount equal to 0.18 ± 0.20% and 0.07 ± 0.05% for MSG and LT, respectively. In vitro tests were performed using a Franz diffusion cell to simulate the contact with the human skin. The release of MSG reaches a plateau after about 28 h while LF release leveled off after 15 h. The in vitro compatibility of electrospun membranes has been evaluated on HaCaT and BJ cell lines, as human keratinocytes and fibroblasts, respectively. The reported data proved the potential application of fabricated membranes for wound healing.

Recent advances in electrospun protein fibers/nanofibers for the food and biomedical applications

Electrospinning (ES) is one of the most investigated processes for the convenient, adaptive, and scalable manufacturing of nano/micro/macro-fibers. With this technique, virgin and composite fibers may be made in different designs using a wide range of polymers (both natural and synthetic). Electrospun protein fibers (EPF) shave desirable capabilities such as biocompatibility, low toxicity, degradability, and solvolysis. However, issues with the proteins' processibility have limited their widespread utilization. This paper gives an overview of the features of protein-based biomaterials, which are already being employed and has the potential to be exploited for ES. State-of-the-art examples showcasing the usefulness of EPFs in the food and biomedical industries, including tissue engineering, wound dressings, and drug delivery, provided in the applications. The EPFs' future perspective and the challenge they pose are presented at the end. It is believed that protein and biopolymeric nanofibers will soon be manufactured on an industrial scale owing to the limitations of employing synthetic materials, as well as enormous potential of nanofibers in other fields, such as active food packaging, regenerative medicine, drug delivery, cosmetic, and filtration.

Self-powered portable melt electrospinning for in situ wound dressing

Background

Electrospun (e-spun) nanofibers for wound dressing have attracted wide attention due to its large specific surface area, large porosity and breathability. Compared with solution electrospinning (e-spinning), melt e-spinning is more bio-friendly without toxic solvent participation, which provides the possibility of in situ e-spinning on wounds directly. However, previously reported melt e-spinning devices were usually bulky and cumbersome due to their necessary heating unit, and different components were separated to avoid electrostatic interference.

Results

In this article, we report on a self-powered hand-held melt e-spinning gun which can work without any external power supply (outdoors). The problem of electrostatic interference for this integrated device was solved by using a special high heat transfer insulation unit. The apparatus is easy and safe to operate by a single hand due to its small volume (24 × 6 × 13 cm³) and light weight (about 450 g). Some biodegradable polymers, for example, polycaprolactone (PCL) fibers were successful e-spun onto wounds directly by using this dressing gun.

Conclusions

PCL fibrous membrane has good biocompatibility and can be in situ electrospun to wound surface as a wound dressing by the portable melt e-spinning gun. Besides wound dressing, this hand-held melt e-spinning gun may be used in 3D printing and experimental teaching demonstration aids.

Peptide-protein based nanofibers in pharmaceutical and biomedical applications

In recent years, electrospun fibers have found wide use, especially in pharmaceutical area and biomedical applications, related to the various advantages such as high surface-volume ratio, high solubility and having wide usage areas they have provided. Biocompatible and biodegradable fibers can be obtained by using peptide-protein structures of plant and animal derived along with synthetic polymers. Plant-derived proteins used in nanofiber production can be listed as, zein, soy protein, and gluten and animal derived proteins can be listed as casein, silk fibroin, hemoglobine, bovine serum albumin, elastin, collagen, gelatin, and keratin. Plant and animal proteins and synthetic peptides used in electrospun fiber production were reviewed in detail. In addition, the important physical properties of these materials for the electrospinning process and their use in pharmaceutical and biomedical areas were discussed.

Enriched Mechanical Strength and Bone Mineralisation of Electrospun Biomimetic Scaffold Laden with Ylang Ylang Oil and Zinc Nitrate for Bone Tissue Engineering

Scaffolds supplemented with naturally derived materials seem to be a good choice in bone tissue engineering. This study aims to develop polyurethane (PU) nanofibers added with ylang ylang (YY) and zinc nitrate (ZnNO₃) using the electrospinning method. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) images showed that the diameter of the PU nanofibers (869 ± 122 nm) was reduced with the addition of YY and ZnNO₃ (PU/YY-467 ± 132 nm and PU/YY/ZnNO₃-290 ± 163 nm). Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), a thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) and an X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis confirmed the interactions between PU with YY and ZnNO₃. In addition, a thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) study revealed the improved thermal stability for PU/YY and a slight reduction in the thermal stability for PU/YY/ZnNO₃. A tensile test indicated that the addition of YY and ZnNO3 (PU/YY-12.32 MPa and PU/YY/ZnNO₃-14.90 MPa) improved the mechanical properties of the pristine PU (6.83 MPa). The electrospun PU/YY (524 nm) and PU/YY/ZnNO₃ (284 nm) showed a reduced surface roughness when compared with the pristine PU (776 nm) as depicted in the atomic force microscopy (AFM) analysis. The addition of YY and ZnNO₃ improved the anticoagulant and biocompatibility nature of the pristine PU. Furthermore, the bone mineralization study depicted the improved calcium deposition in the fabricated composites (PU/YY-7.919% and PU/YY/ZnNO₃-10.150%) compared to the pristine PU (5.323%). Hence, the developed composites with desirable physico-chemical properties, biocompatibility and calcium deposition can serve as plausible candidates for bone tissue engineering.