Abstract:

Nowadays targeted drug delivery is one of the areas widely investigated in the biomedical application of modern technologies. Propolis is well known natural material because of its confirmed antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory activity, and for these reasons it could be considered as a candidate in developing wound healing textile materials. Electrospun bicomponent mats of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and aqueous propolis solution were manufactured and analysed in this study. It was observed that the concentration of phenolic acids in aqueous propolis solution or the amount of aqueous propolis in the electrospinning solution had no significant influence on the structure of electrospun mats. From bicomponent PVA/aqueous propolis solutions fewer nanofibres with a diameter of up to 100 nm were electrospun, nor from PVA solution containing no added substances. Analysis of phenolic compound release kinetics demonstrated that up to 86 - 96% of vanilic acid, caffeic acid, vanillin acid, p-coumaric acid and ferulic acid had been released from the electrospun PVA/aqueous propolis solution mats in 15 min. It was concluded that electrospun mats from biocomponent PVA/aqueous propolis nano-microfibres may be considered for developing a drug delivery system for local application.