Bacterial cellulose (BC) is a biopolymer commonly used for wound dressing due to its high biocompatible properties either in-vitro or in-vivo. The three-dimensional fiber structure of BC becomes an advantage because it provides a template for the impregnation of materials in order to improve BC's properties as a wound dressing, since BC has not displayed any bioactivity properties. In this study, micro-colloidal Zanthoxylum acanthopodium (MZA) fruit was loaded into BC fibers via an in-situ method. Z. acanthopodium is known to have anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and antimicrobial activities that can support BC to accelerate the wound healing process. The FTIR, XRD and SEM analysis results showed that the loading process of MZA and the composite fabrication were successfully carried out. The TGA test also showed that the presence of MZA in BC fibers decreased Tmax composite from BC, from 357.8 to 334.5 °C for BC-MZA3. Other aspects, i.e., water content, porosity, hemocompatibility and histology studies, also showed that the composite could potentially be used as a wound dressing.
Keywords: BC-MZA; MZA; bacterial cellulose; composite; wound dressing.