Fabrication and characterization of curcumin-loaded silk fibroin/P(LLA-CL) nanofibrous scaffold

Abstract

Curcumin exhibited excellent properties including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal, anticancer, and anticoagulant activities. In this study, curcumin was incorporated into silk fibroin (SF)/poly(L-lactic acid-co-e-caprolactone) (P(LLA-CL)) nanofibrous scaffolds via electrospinning, and changes brought about by raising the curcumin content were observed: SEM images showed that the average nanofibrous diameter decreased at the beginning and then increased, and the nanofibers became uniform; FTIR showed that the conformation of SF transforming from random coil form to β-sheet structure had not been induced, while SF conformation converted to β-sheet after being treated with 75% ethanol vapor; XRD results confirmed that the crystal structure of (P(LLA-CL)) had been destroyed; The mechanical test illustrated that nanofibrous scaffolds still maintained good mechanical properties. Further, curcumin-loaded nanofibrous scaffolds were evaluated for drug release, antioxidant and antimicrobial activities in vitro. The results showed that curcumin presented a sustained release behavior from nanofibrous scaffolds and maintained its free radical scavenging ability, and such scaffolds could effectively inhibit S. aureus growth (> 95%). Thus, curcumin-loaded SF/P(LLA-CL) nanofibrous scaffolds might be potential candidates for wound dressing and tissue engineering scaffolds.

Keywords

curcumin / SF/P(LLA-CL) / nanofibrous scaffold / control release

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Independent Design Project of Key Scientific and Technological Innovation Team of Zhejiang Province (Grant No. 2010R50012-19), the Key SRT Project of Jiaxing University (Grant No. 851713022), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31271035), and Zhejiang Province Public Technology Applied Research Projects (Grant No. 2014C33005).

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg