Abstract
Skin burns are injuries of different degrees of complexity (first to third) caused by physical and/or chemical trauma. There is a necessity to improve the rapid retrieval of superficial wounds (first grade) to enhance epithelization, avoiding dehydration, infections, and scar formation. This work proposes an oil in water (O/W) emulsion based on 1% of Calendula officinalis L. extract, due to its recognized traditional uses as medicinal plant in wound care, with reported beneficial secondary metabolites such as Carotenoids, Terpenoids, Flavonoids, Coumarins, and Quinones. The rheological characterization of the obtained emulsions indicated superior stability over time (2 months) and a pseudoplastic and semisolid fluid behavior. Furthermore, the emulsions were evaluated biologically in terms of biosafety in vitro with promising results that showed a hemolytic behavior (72.66%) and a moderate platelet aggregation (73.06%) tendency, which is beneficial as it can contribute to enhancing the healing process. Additionally, the emulsions were characterized physicochemically by frequency curves, flow curves of shear stress, and viscosity. Currently, we are conducting a droplet size distribution assay, and conducting 2D wound healing assays in a scratch model over a monolayer of keratinocytes. Thus far, the results hold much promise and indicate that these emulsions can be potentially employed in the treatments of burn wounds.
Supplementary Materials
The presentation material of this work is available online at https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/IECBM2022-13384/s1.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization, S.T. and V.J.; methodology, S.T. and V.J.; validation, S.T., V.J., J.C.C. and C.M.-C.; formal analysis, S.T. and V.J.; investigation, S.T. and V.J.; data curation, S.T. and V.J.; writing—original draft preparation, S.T.; writing—review and editing, S.T., J.C.C. and C.M.-C.; visualization, S.T., V.J., J.C.C. and C.M.-C.; supervision, J.C.C., C.M.-C. and A.G.B. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
This research received was funded by the Colombian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (Minciencias), Grant IDs 782-2019 and 845-2018. Additional funding was provided by the 2019 Fundación Santafé de Bogotá-Uniandes grant “Production of recombinant antimicrobial peptides to modify materials of biomedical interest”.
Institutional Review Board Statement
Human blood samples were collected under permission granted by the ethics committee at Universidad de los Andes (minute number 928-2018).
Informed Consent Statement
Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.
Data Availability Statement
Not applicable.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Department of Food and Chemical Engineering at Universidad de los Andes for the financial and technical support.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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