Designing of Natural Scaffold Coated with Herbal Extracts for Wound Healing

Skin is the most important organ of the human frame. It acts as abarrier and protection to the complete human body. When skin gets injured, the repair process entails removal of the damaged tissue and laying down of a new extracellular matrix (ECM) over which epidermal continuity can be re-established. Burns can cause many of the reasons. It can cause tremendous problems for themselves and their families. Burns are classified according to its depth of severity. Nowadays industries are moving towards the water origin collagen, particularly the fish to create a scaffold for wound treatments. Instead of deriving collagen from fish, the fish skin acts as the scaffold. Tilapia fish is rich in collagen which is used to create a scaffold to treat wounds. This is the first time that the origin the collagen is directly applied on the skin for wound healing. Now a day’s modern medicines are derived from medicinal value herbs. Herbs have its own medicinal values. In this study, tridax procumbens is chosen because of its higher wound healing and reepithelialization property. The herb is extracted and blended with tilapia’s skin to minimize the healing time. FTIR studies are confirmed that the components responsible for wound healing are present in both tilapia skin and extract of tridax procumbens. Structural studies are done by SEM analysis. The breaking point of that skin is found by tensile strength analysis. The biodegradation study revealed that the scaffolds mass reduced to 50% in 20 days. After 35th day the rate of reduction in mass was very less when compared with previous days. MTT study revealed that the coated scaffold has less toxicity when compared to the coated scaffold.

Keywords: Burns; Collagen; Degradation; Scaffold; Tridax procumbens; Tilapia; Wound healing