Therapeutic agents loaded chitosan-based nanofibrous mats as potential wound dressings: A review

Wound dressings have evolved significantly since the ancient times. Chitosan-based nanofibrous mats obtained by electrospinning technique show excellent potential as wound dressings owing to its numerous advantages, including large surface area-to-volume ratio, smaller pore size, drug delivery ability, biodegradability, biocompatibility, and hemostatic and antimicrobial activities. Recently, chitosan-based nanofibrous wound dressings loaded with therapeutic agents (antimicrobial, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agents) emerged as an effective choice to reduce the wound infections and accelerate the wound healing process. This review describes the main clinical challenges associated with the wound healing process, and we provide an overview of the latest research on chitosan-based nanofibrous wound dressings. Furthermore, we intended to outline the recent studies in the delivery of therapeutic agents using chitosan-based nanofibrous mats. Finally, we discussed the recent advances have used nanofibrous mats with dual therapeutic/multi-therapeutic agents delivery for wound healing applications. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.