Hollow Particles Obtained by Prilling and Supercritical Drying as a Potential Conformable Dressing for Chronic Wounds
Maria Rosaria Sellitto,
Chiara Amante,
Rita Patrizia Aquino,
Paola Russo,
Rosalía Rodríguez-Dorado,
Monica Neagu,
Carlos A. García-González,
Renata Adami,
Pasquale Del Gaudio
Affiliations
Maria Rosaria Sellitto
Department of Pharmacy, University of Salerno, 84084 Fisciano, SA, Italy
Chiara Amante
Department of Pharmacy, University of Salerno, 84084 Fisciano, SA, Italy
Rita Patrizia Aquino
Department of Pharmacy, University of Salerno, 84084 Fisciano, SA, Italy
Paola Russo
Department of Pharmacy, University of Salerno, 84084 Fisciano, SA, Italy
Rosalía Rodríguez-Dorado
Department of Pharmacy, University of Salerno, 84084 Fisciano, SA, Italy
Monica Neagu
Immunology Department, Victor Babes National Institute of Pathology, 050096 Bucharest, Romania
Carlos A. García-González
Department of Pharmacology, Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Technology, R+D Pharma Group (GI-1645), Faculty of Pharmacy and Health Research Institute of Santiago de Compostela (IDIS), Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, E-15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Renata Adami
Department of Physics “E. R. Caianiello”, University of Salerno, 84084 Fisciano, SA, Italy
Pasquale Del Gaudio
Department of Pharmacy, University of Salerno, 84084 Fisciano, SA, Italy
The production of aerogels for different applications has been widely known, but the use of polysaccharide-based aerogels for pharmaceutical applications, specifically as drug carriers for wound healing, is being recently explored. The main focus of this work is the production and characterization of drug-loaded aerogel capsules through prilling in tandem with supercritical extraction. In particular, drug-loaded particles were produced by a recently developed inverse gelation method through prilling in a coaxial configuration. Particles were loaded with ketoprofen lysinate, which was used as a model drug. The core-shell particles manufactured by prilling were subjected to a supercritical drying process with CO2 that led to capsules formed by a wide hollow cavity and a tunable thin aerogel layer (40 μm) made of alginate, which presented good textural properties in terms of porosity (89.9% and 95.3%) and a surface area up to 417.0 m2/g. Such properties allowed the hollow aerogel particles to absorb a high amount of wound fluid moving very quickly (less than 30 s) into a conformable hydrogel in the wound cavity, prolonging drug release (till 72 h) due to the in situ formed hydrogel that acted as a barrier to drug diffusion.
