Development of electrospun Plectranthus amboinicus loaded PCL polymeric nanofibrous scaffold for skin wound healing application: in-vitro and in-silico analysis

Wound healing is an essential cellular process involving numerous mechanisms. For an effective wound healing process, a suitable material must be applied to prevent the wound from various infections. Recently, researchers have mainly concentrated on development of wound dressing material by combining polymer with medicinal plant extracts based electrospun nanofibers due to their structural morphology mimicking extra cellular matrix of native skin organ. Thus, this study emphasizes on synthesizing nanofibrous scaffolds of polycaprolactone (PCL) incorporated with the extract of P. amboinicus, a therapeutic and bioactive drug, for wound healing application. The leaf extract contains phytochemicals such as tannins, steroids, essential oils, flavonoids, alkaloids and terpenes, etc., which are preferable for skin wound healing application. The fabricated nanofibers are characterized by SEM, XRD, FTIR analysis. The results of SEM analysis reveals structural morphology of electrospun nanofibrous scaffold showing a continuous, smooth, bead-less and inter connective nanofibrous structure. The results of XRD pattern reveals two characteristic peaks at 2θ = 21.4° and 2θ = 23.4° for the developed nanofibers which confirms that the PCL structure was maintained. The in-vitro MTT assay shows that the biocompatibility property is the highest for P. amboinicus (3%) loaded PCL nanofibrous scaffold. The fabricated P. amboinicus (3%) loaded PCL nanofiber shows higher anti-bacterial efficiency against mixed bacterial culture, thus providing their capability for pathogenic resistance. The results of contact angle measurement exhibit 112°±0.51, 77.1°± 0.1 and 53.1°±0.4 for PCL, PCL + P. amboinicus (1 and 3%) nanofibrous scaffolds proving an increased hydrophilic character of nanofibers that helps in maintaining moist environment on the wound site. From the results of gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, three phytochemical compounds i.e., diethyl phthalate, n-hexadecanoic acid and stigmasterol, are selected based on the area percentage. Docking analysis is carried out to confirm the wound healing property of the selected phytochemical compounds present in the methanolic extract of P. amboinicus against matrix metalloproteinases (MMP8) target protein. The docking results confirm that the electrospun PCL + P. amboinicus nanofibrous scaffold is a suitable therapeutic material for skin wound healing applications.