Hybrid Soy Protein Based Structures for Wound Dressing Applications

Use of naturally derived materials for biomedical applications is steadily increasing. Soy protein has advantages over various types of natural proteins employed for biomedical applications due to its availability, low cost, non-animal origin and versatility in processing. In the current study, we developed a novel hybrid structure for wound dressing applications. It contains a dense layer and a spongy porous layer, both based on soy protein. The porous sub-layer is designed to contain a hemostatic agent and the dense upper layer is designed to contain an antibiotic drug and an analgesic drug, to be released to the wound site in a controlled manner. We found that the mechanical properties in tension and the physical properties are effected mainly by the formulation parameters. Higher crosslinking agent content results in significant increase in the modulus and some increase in the strength. Higher plasticizer content and lower crosslinking agent content results in higher ductility. Higher plasticizer content and lower crosslinking agent content resulted in higher water uptake, higher swelling, and lower weight loss. The concept of hemostatic hybrid soy wound dressings with release of antibiotic and pain killer is novel and has not been studied before.