Bone fractures associated with osteoporosis are a serious worldwide problem, especially among the elderly. Despite significant advances in the treatment of osteoporosis over the past few decades, osteoporotic fractures remain a major clinical challenge in the elderly population due to impaired healing. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are a family of host-derived proteolytic enzymes that play a key role in tissue-destroying inflammatory diseases and has also shown to play role in osteoporosis. Chlorhexidine (CHX) is a compound capable of inhibiting MMP by binding calcium and zinc ions necessary for proteolytic activity. To allow the tissue to heal efficiently in patients with reduced regenerative capacity, the active molecules, such as cyclohexidine, can be encapsulated in the fibers and implanted in the affected site.
The electrospinning technique has been widely recognized as an effective and convenient method of producing functional biomaterials from nanofibers. Electro-spun polymer-ceramic composites have gained interest as scaffolding in bone engineering applications. Electro-spun fibers have many advantages when it comes to their use as drug delivery systems (DDS), such as biocompatibility. Tunable biodegradability, drug release rate.
The research aimed to create fibrous scaffolds made of polyethylene oxide (PEO) and polycaprolactone (PCL) of different proportions with the encapsulation of chlorhexidine as MMP modulators. The timed release of active molecules can lead to faster and more complete healing. To control the release rate of the MMP modulatore, the amount of PEO in PCL-PEO fibers can varied. In this work, we investigated the influence of the PCL:PEO ration on the release rate of the small molecules from electrospun nanofibers.