Preparation of pullulan based wound dressing and investigation of its biomaterial properties

This study presents the preparation and characterization of pullulan grafted copolymer hydrogel as a new wound dressing material. In this study, novel pullulan grafted poly(acrylic acid-co-itaconic acid)(Pu-g-p(AA-co-IA)) composite hydrogels are prepared and investigated as wound dressing material for the first time in the literature. Pu-g-p(AA-co-IA) hydrogels were synthesized via UV crosslinking graft copolymerization of acrylic acid itaconic acid and onto pullulan, in the presence of N,N'-methylenebisacrylamide as crosslinking agent and ammonium persulfate as initiator. Ampicillin loaded Pu-g-p(AA-co-IA) hydrogels were prepared in the same manner with the addition of the drug in the reaction media. Detailed characterizations of drug-free and drug-loaded hydrogels were performed through FT-IR, SEM, DSC and TGA analyses. Hydrolytic degradation, swelling and in-vitro cytotoxicity studies were performed to reveal the performance of Pu-g-p(AA-co-IA) as wound dressing material. The results of in-vitro drug release tests showed that 67% of the loaded drug was released from the Pu-g-p(AA-co-IA) hydrogels after 7 days. The results revealed that the proposed Pu-g-p(AA-co-IA) hydrogels having high swelling capacities could be acceptable as a promising candidate for wound dressing applications.