Evaluation of plant extracts as wound healing agents for future internal bioadhesive applications

Abstract

Wounds can result from various types of injuries, including scratches, burns, punctures, and surgical incisions. While surgical wound closure methods such as sutures have been used for centuries, they often prove to be suboptimal. Surgeries have been performed for centuries, and since then, methods to close wounds have seen little to no improvement. Sutures have been used as wound closure techniques, since the beginning of the practice and although they serve their purpose, studies show that they are not ideal in most cases. In response to the ongoing quest for an ideal wound closure method, bioadhesive entered the market. Although many have been developed and even commercialized, there is still not one single bioadhesive that can successfully replace sutures/staples. Due to this gap in the market, BestHealth4U (BH4U) is aiming to develop the ideal internal abdominal bioadhesive based on their novelty bioadhesive “Bio2Skin”. The present study aims to evaluate and analyse the ethanolic extracts form the plants Artemisia Annua L, Centella Asiatica and Moringa Oleifera, as wound healing agents to potentially be incorporated in BH4U’s internal bioadhesive. For this analysis, two assays were performed on NCM460 (normal Human colon epithelial) cell line and HCT-15 (Human colorectal carcinoma) cell line. The Sulforhodamine B cellular cytotoxicity assay (SRB) was conducted first, in order to define the concentrations at which the plant extracts were cytotoxic to the tissues. The results gathered showed that the extract obtained from the Artemisia Annua L plant revealed to have the least cell viability in comparison with the other two, being that only the least concentrated sample (5 g/mL) could be viable, for both cell lines. The wound healing assay by scratch method was done posteriorly to determine if the plant extracts promoted wound healing in the cells used. The results demonstrated that all extracts showed positive results and were significantly higher than the control for the NCM460 cell line. Regarding the HCT-15 cell line, the A.A and M.O extracts showed indications of wound healing inhibition, while the extract C.A exhibited results similar to those of the control. Based on these results, it was concluded that the extracts A.A and M.O are the most suitable for future implementation in the bioadhesive, as they not only promote healing in healthy cells but also reduce the growth of cancer cells.

Date of Award	12 Dec 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Nelson Duarte Mendes Oliveira (Supervisor) & Sónia Carla Abrantes Ferreira (Co-Supervisor)