Preparation and characterization of porous polymeric membranes featured antibacterial as a wound/burn dressing material

In this thesis the aim is to design a double layer silk fibroin scaffold to provide with a treatment which requires long-term to heal the skin tissue losses. The scaffold should possess interconnecting pores of appropriate scale to favour tissue integration and vascularisation, and also should have appropriate surface chemistry to favour cellular attachment, differentiation and proliferation. Therefore, firstly silk fibroin sponges having high porous structure are produced by the method of freeze drying to represent the dermis layer of the skin. The produced silk fibroin sponges are immobilized with heparin to accelerate the recovery of the wounds. The analysis of the sponges is characterized by SEM. The surfaces of these sponges are covered with the nano fiber film layer acting as an epidermis layer of the skin, used electrospinning technique. For decades silver-containing antibiotics such as silver sulfadiazine (AgSD) have been applied as standard topical therapy for patients with partial-thickness burns and venous stasis ulcers. In this study, silver sulfadiazine is used as an antibacterial agent to acquire antibacterial feature of the top layer of the double layer scaffolds. Key words: Skin Tissue Engineering, Silk Fibroin, Antibacterial Wound Dressings