Chitosan-coated collagen-hyaluronic acid-poly ethylene oxide-based electrospun membrane for corneal ulcers wound dressing candidate

Corneal disease is the 2^nd biggest reason of blindness after cataract. Based on WHO data, it was predicted that 10 million people in the world would suffer from cornea-related sight deficiency. One of the solutions is by using wound dressing to cover the cornea so that it could heal effectively. Several studies were conducted to observe the use of collagen, hyaluronic acid, and PEO for wound dressing. To increase the properties of the membrane, chitosan coating was introduced. In this study, we observe the effect of chitosan coating on the electrospun membrane based on collagen, hyaluronic acid, and PEO combined with glutaraldehyde as a crosslinker. The result in FTIR test showed that the crosslinking process ended up in new bond formed among the materials used in this study. The chitosan coating could increase the transparency of the membrane as shown by the result of UV/Vis Spectrophotometry test but the result was not significantly different (p-value > 0.05). The morphology test using SEM showed that the pore diameter of the membrane decreased with the presence of chitosan coating (p-value < 0.05). Likewise, with an increase of chitosan coating concentration, the pores diameter also decreased. The cytotoxicity test showed that the membrane with several chitosan coating concentrations were non-toxic with cell viability more than 50 % (p-value < 0.05). The chitosan coating also had antibacterial effect as shown by the inhibition zone (p-value < 0.05), especially to Pseudomonas aeruginosa as gram positive bacteria. In conclusion, the presence of chitosan coating could improve the characteristics of the electrospun membrane coated with chitosan for wound dressing in corneal ulcers case.