Ethics Committee. Then, those wounds are dressed on daily basis with the developed

dressing materials, and healing efficacy is determined with respect to the control

(wound not treated by any means). Generally, herbal drug-loaded wound dressing

creams are prepared through oil/water emulsification process. The wound dressing

cream incorporated with cow ghee, flax seed oil, Phyllanthus emblica fruit, Shorea

robusta resin and Yashada bhasma is very effective in triggering wound contraction,

improvement of tensile strength of wound, growth of hydroxyproline and collagen

deposition (Datta et al. 2011). Hydrogels are very promising wound dressing

materials, and recently hydrogels are modified with some specific functional groups

to interact with loaded molecules in such a way that the control release of that loaded

molecules can be observed through in vivo studies (Gong et al. 2013; Jeffords et al.

2015; Wang et al. 2010). Further, this kind of surface modifications improve water

solubility, bioavailability and selectivity (Brandl et al. 2010). The nanohybrid

hydrogel of starch-zeolite is biocompatible in nature and exhibits excellent wound

closure efficacy after incorporation with chamomile extract, a herbal drug (Salehi

et al. 2017). In vivo studies exhibit better efficiency of the drug-loaded nanohybrid

hydrogel as compared to pure hydrogel. The histopathological studies show com-

plete epithelialization and hair follicles after 21 days of treatment with drug-loaded

nanohybrid hydrogel. Hence, the presence of zeolite nanoparticles regulates the

delivery of the herbal drugs in a controlled way which helps to trigger the healing

process. Another in vivo study on Wistar rats reveals better wound contraction with

low dose of simvastatin-chitosan microparticle-incorporated poly(vinyl alcohol)

(PVA) as compared to simvastatin ointment (1%) (Yasasvini et al. 2017). Vitexin

is a flavonoid and has anti-inflammatory, analgesic and antioxidant effects (Borghi

et al. 2013). The vitexin-loaded chitosan hydrogel exhibits superior healing

properties in terms of re-epithelialization and vascularization as compared to pure

chitosan and madecassol group in in vivo wound model. The wound area contraction

is significant in 7th and 14th day with vitexin-loaded chitosan hydrogel group as

compared to control or madecassol group (Bektas et al. 2020) (Fig. 30.2a, b). The

anti-inflammatory and antioxidant property of chitosan and antimicrobial property of

the herbal drug synergistically accelerate the healing rate in animal model.

The electrospun scaffolds have advantages as wound dressing because of its high

reproducibility, large surface area, non-adherent property, biocompatibility and fast

local drug releasing capability (Biswas et al. 2018a; Agnes Mary and Giri Dev

2015). Curcumin is one of the widely used traditional herbal drugs for wound

healing purpose because of its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties which

help to minimize the inflammatory stage of wound and heal faster (Lian et al. 2014).

But, its poor stability and inadequate bioavailability restrict its application in wound

healing. However, these demerits can be overcome by incorporating it into a suitable

delivery vehicle. The curcumin-loaded PCL/gum tragacanth electrospun nanofibre

exhibits excellent wound healing properties in terms of significantly faster wound

contraction, collagen deposition, complete early re-epithelialization and formation of

sweat glands and hair follicles in diabetic animal wound model (Ranjbar-

Mohammadi et al. 2016). Nepeta dschuparensis, a herbal medicinal plant, is very

well-known for its antibacterial, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. The

592

A. Biswas et al.