Surface immobilization of PCL electrospun nanofibers with pexiganan for wound dressing

Wound management is essential to provide an appropriate environment for healing or avoiding wound or postsurgery contamination, which remains a serious clinical issue. In this study, we developed a novel wound dressing by using the electrospinning technique to draw continuous polymeric fibers from either a polymer solution or polymer melt to fabricate wound dressings with good medicinal properties. Polycaprolactone (PCL) is a biomaterial with good properties that was utilized in this work to produce PCL electrospun mats. Given their hydrophobic properties, however, PCL electrospun mats were hydrolyzed by alkali hydrolysis to permit antibacterial agent attachment. To confer antibacterial properties, pexiganan, an antimicrobial peptide (AMP), was employed as the active agent at various concentrations. The results indicate that PCL electrospun mats treated with pexiganan exhibited efficient bacterial inhibition of both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. To assess in vitro cytotoxicity, the viability of human dermal fibroblast (HDF) cells following application of the treated mats was measured and found to be significantly decreased at 1 day depending on the amount of deposited agent; nevertheless, the PCL electrospun mats were validated according to ISO 10993–5:2009.