Fabrication of baicalein-encapsulated zeolitic imidazole framework as a novel nanocomposited wound closure material to persuade pH-responsive healing efficacy in post-caesarean section wound care.

Baicalein is a plant-derived compound, it has widespread attention among biomedical researchers due to its biocompatibility and efficient biological activities. But it has non-solubility in physiological conditions and short bioavailability in the clinical process. The Discovery of a stimuli-based drug delivery system (DDS) is a perfect strategy to improve the bioactivity of baicalin in post-caesarean section wound care. We prepared a baicalein-encapsulated pH-responsive DDS with a zeolite imidazole framework-8 (ZIF-8) as a carrier. We investigated the material characteristics of DDS in terms of crystal structure, surface area morphology, particle size, FTIR, UV-vis, Powder XRD, and BET analysis techniques. The in vitro cytotoxicity, biocompatibility, and cell proliferation properties of BA@ZIF-8 were assessed against human fibroblast L929 cells. In vitro studies showed that BA@ZIF-8 nanocomposite significantly enhanced the biocompatibility against L929 cells after 72 h post-exposure. The pH-responsive drug release kinetics shows excellent baicalein release under acidic conditions and without unwanted drug release in physiological conditions. Wound scratch assay results revealed, that BA@ZIF-8 nanocomposite-treated cells exhibit the fastest cell proliferation and migration process in a very short period. In the antibacterial activity study, nanocomposite exposed dose depended on inhibition against wound infectious pathogens. The overall study signifies that BA@ZIF-8 nano-DDSs are effective and suitable DDS for stimuli-based post-caesarean section wound care.