Curcumin-loaded silk fibroin e-gel scaffolds for wound healing applications

Recently, silk fibroin gel systems (e-gel), formed with weak electric fields have been prepared for various tissue-engineering applications such as neural, cartilage and bone. Here, we demonstrated the effectiveness of an electroresponsive silk fibroin (SF) hydrogel, which is a 3-D scaffold formed and used as a wound dressing material. SEM studies revealed that the curcumin (CUR)-loaded SF (CUR-SF) consisted of a 3-D porous structure with a porosity percent of 80% and a swelling ratio over 100%. Colony forming unit assay confirmed that CUR-SF e-gel scaffolds produced a reduction in viable bacteria compared to bare SF scaffolds. In vitro studies performed with immortalized human keratinocyte (HaCaT) indicated no toxicity of CUR-loaded SF e-gel scaffolds to healthy cells. Taking all the results together, it was suggested that the CUR-SF e-gel scaffolds could improve the wound healing activity in comparison to SF without curcumin and be potentially used as a wound dressing material.