Progress in the Development and Applicability of Potential Medicinal Plant Extract-Conjugated Polymeric Constructs...

Wound, burn and tissue related diseases are the most common and devastating forms of trauma worldwide and thousands are still dying each year when they are left untreated. The traditional treatments for wound infection using medicinal plant extracts in hydrogels and ointment formulations have several disadvantages, delicate shape and dry up quickly upon exposure to air. Indeed, there is need for the development of an alternative form of dressing material for wound healing applications. Because the medicinal plant products are economical, researchers have adopted a novel approach of complexing the active components of plants with various groups of polymers to develop biodegradable fabrications. Moreover, fabricated constructs are very extremely useful as scaffold in tissue regeneration with known successes in wound healing/ dressing applications that the fabricated substitutes mimic the extracellular matrix of tissue. In this review, we give an extensive overview on scientifically evaluated bioactive molecules of medicinal plants as well as plant extract blended polymeric constructs for the possible treatment of various skin injuries. In addition, the technological challenges and future trends for recent developments of the treatments of wound infections are extensively summarized. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.