Preparation and characterization of modern wound covers

This diploma thesis is focused on the study of bioactive wound dressings. During the thesis, hydrogel, lyophilized and nanofiber wound dressings were prepared. Hydrogel and lyophilized wound dressings were prepared on basis of two polysaccharides – alginate and chitosan. Nanofiber wound dressings were prepared by spinning polyhydroxybutyrate. All prepared wound dressings were enriched with bioactive substances, which represented analgesics (ibuprofen), antibiotics (ampicillin) and enzymes (collagenase). Into hydrogel and lyophilized wound dressings were all the mentioned active substances incorporated, whereas nanofiber wound dressings were only with ibuprofen and ampicillin prepared. The theoretical part deals with the anatomy and function of human skin. There was explained the process of wound healing and also there were introduced available modern wound dressings. The next chapter of the theoretical part deals with materials for preparing wound dressings (alginate, chitosan, polyhydroxybutyrate) and with active substances, which were used during the experimental part of this thesis. In the theoretical part, the methods of preparation of nanofiber wound dressings and also the methods of cytotoxicity testing used in this work were presented. The first part of the experimental part of this thesis was focused on preparing already mentioned wound dressings. Then, their morphological changes over time and also the gradual release of incorporated active substances into the model environment were monitored. The gradual release of ampicillin was monitored not only spectrophotometrically, but also by ultra-high-performance chromatography. In wound dressings, in which collagenase was incorporated, was also the final proteolytic activity of this enzyme monitored. The effect of the active substances was observed on three selected microorganisms: Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus epidermidis and Candida glabrata. The cytotoxic effect of the active substances on the human keratinocyte cell line was monitored by MTT test and LDH test. A test for monitoring the rate of wound healing – a scratch test – was also performed