Vanessa Gonçalves
iBET, Portugal
Title: Novel Alginate-Chitosan aerogel fibers for potential wound healing applications
Biography
Biography: Vanessa Gonçalves
Abstract
Wound healing it’s a complex and dynamic biological process. In recent years, the development of new wound dressing products from marine sources is gaining increased interest due to their unique properties such as antimicrobial activity (e.g. chitosan) or the capacity to provide a moist environment (e.g. alginate). Moreover, aerogels are porous structures with large surface area in which it is possible to achieve high drug loadings. In this work, newly alginate-chitosan aerogel fibers for wound healing application were prepared by emulsion-gelation method and further dried with supercritical CO2. The morphology and specific surface area of the final fibers were studied by scanning electron microscopy and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller method, respectively. Furthermore, menthol, a monoterpene with antimicrobial activity, was loaded into the fibers by supercritical adsorption and quantified by gas chromatography analysis. Finally, the antimicrobial activity of alginate-chitosan fibers and alginate-chitosan fibers loaded with menthol were evaluated and its possible cytotoxicity was studied using human fibroblasts.