Research Projects

Burns have been one of the major emergency situations which need an urgent medical assistance at every stage irrespective of developing or developed countries, age or gender. India reports as many as 70 lakh burn injury cases per year accounting to 1.4 lakh deaths and 2.4 lakh cases of associated disability. Burn wound management requires removal of dead/burnt/necrotic skin and/or skin grafting. All these interventions involve the risk of multiple infections leading to even organ failures owing to suppressed immune system and hence difficult palliative care. These complications are not fully addressed by the present day available topical formulations as possessing higher side-effects and limited efficacy. In this regard, human defensins may prove to be essential candidates against burn wounds especially human neutrophil peptide-1 (HNP-1) owing to its site of origin i.e neutrophils which indeed are the front liners in wound healing or remodeling post injury. HNP-1 is known to play a key role in activating, modulating and mediating the innate as well as adaptive immune response in infection and inflammation. Hence, the non-invasive targeted exogenous administration of HNP-1 might be the catalyst in burn wound healing along with its antimicrobial potential which will prevent the wound site from any invading pathogen. The present study envisaged to load HNP-1 in mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) and will be applied topically via a gel carrier system (carbopol/organogel) over the burn injury. Major reasons to select MSNs are their worth mentioning resistant towards wide range of stresses including mechanical, pH, and thermal and their higher drug/peptide loading capacity with desired release on demand (unloading). Apart from this MSNs are “Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS)” by United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA), which makes them eligible for therapeutics treatments. Post loading HNP-1 loaded mesoporous silica nanoparticles (H-MSNs) will be introduced in a gel formulation which helps to provide the soothing and cooling effect at the site of injury and cover the whole injury surface thereby preventing it from any outside pathogen. The developed formulation will be characterized and evaluated for its loading capacity, morphology, peptide release kinetics as a function of time, skin regeneration properties, immunomodulation and lastly for in vivo burn wound in Balb/C mice at different phases of wound healing (in particular inflammatory phase). If this study will be proven as conceptualized then this formulation will be a novel candidate in treating burn wounds in all respect i.e. accelerating skin regeneration as well as preventing wounds from multiple infections.