PREPARATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF CURCUMIN NANOPARTICLES LOADED THERMOSENSITIVE GELATIN - PLURONIC F127 HYDROGEL FOR WOUND HEALING APPLICATION

Curcumin, a natural phenolic compound, is extracted from turmeric exhibiting several biomedical activities. Unfortunately, less aqueous solubility causesl  drawback in medicinal application. This study introduces a method in order to produce a biomaterial containing high content of curcumin nanoparticles, which can overcome curcumin’s poor dissolution and wound healing. This method uses a thermo-reversible pluronic F127-grafted gelatin (GP) which play the role as surfactant to disperse and protect nanocurcumin from aggregation. The synthetic GP copolymer was identified via 1H NMR. Thermal transition behavior was identified under test tube inversion and differential scanning colorimetry (DSC). The synthesized curcumin size was characterized by Transmission Electron  Microscopy (TEM) and Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS), which indicated that the size of nanocurcumin significantly varied ranging from 7 to 285 nm according to the amount of feeded curcurmin. The nanocurcumin-dispersed GP copolymer solution forms the nanocomposite hydrogel when warmed up to 36.27 °C. Release profile indicated the sustainable release control of nanocurcumin  in the thermogel system. These results showed potential application of the biomaterial in tissue regeneration.