Fabrication and characterization of ovalbumin films for wound dressing applications

A great number of people suffer from burning injuries all around the world each year. Applying an appropriate wound dressing can promote new tissue formation, prevent losing water and inhibit invasion of infectious organisms. In this study, egg white with a long standing history, as a homemade remedy, was fabricated as a wound dressing for burn injuries. For this reason, ovalbumin films were cross-linked by 1-ethyl-3-3-dimethyl aminopropyl carbodiimide hydrochloride (EDC) with different concentrations (1, 5 and 10 mM) using three concentrations of ethanol. Physical–chemical characterizations including Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), gas transmission rate (GTR), tensile mechanical tests, water uptake and degradation rate were performed on the samples. The sample with 5 mM crosslinking agent at 70% ethanol was considered as the optimized one with 417 kPa of ultimate tensile strength, 64% elongation at break and 230% water uptake. In addition, biological evaluations conducted by MTT and live/dead assay indicated no sign of cyto-toxicity for all the samples. Moreover, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed that the fibroblast cells were well spread on the sample with the formation of filopodia. In conclusion, modified ovalbumin can be applied as the base material for fabrication of wound dressing and skin care products.