Improved genistein loading and release on electrospun chitosan nanofiber blends

Chitosan is a natural polysaccharide exhibiting excellent biocompatibility, biodegradability and nontoxicity, making Chitosan–based biomaterials ideal drug delivery systems and cell carriers for tissue engineering. The electrospinning technique, with optimized parameters, was used to fabricate chitosan/PVA as-spun mats. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) was used to investigate the morphologies of the as-spun mats. We present a novel electrospun nanofiber-based drug delivery. In this system, genistein was loaded on nanofiber mats via three methods namely; passive loading, crosslinking after passive loading, and active loading. The way in which genistein was loaded significantly influenced its in-vitro drug release characteristics. The in-vitro release studies revealed that physical cross-linked nanofibers have a significantly delayed release demonstrating 21% progressive release after 30 min and 69% after 24 h, which is considered a superior drug delivery system compared to those reported before for genistein release.