Ibuprofen-loaded chitosan/silk fibroin nanofibrils aerogel for drug delivery and model test for wound dressing.

Aerogels are well-known as the lightest material with high empty volume inside their structure. There are many advantages of using aerogel as drug carriers by supercritical CO 2 (scCO 2 ) process, including clean manufactory progress, absence of an oxidizing environment and high efficiency to increase solubility of biopharmaceutics Classification System (BCS) class II and IV drug. Ibuprofen is BCS class II drug and has been used as active pharmaceutical ingredients in scCO 2 . Mechanical nanofibrillation silk (150 nm to 300 nm) was simply prepared via wet-mechanical method. The combination of natural polymers as chitosan and mechanical silk fibroin with ibuprofen via scCO 2 had successfully improve ibuprofen drug delivery systems. The Ibuprofen-chitosan and fibroin nanofiber aerogels achieved low density (0.085 g/cm 3 ), high porous (∼98 %), swelling value (>300 %), controllable drug delivery and excellent exudate uptake (>100 %). The obtained material is potential to apply in transdermal drug delivery system, wound dressing and biomedical devices. • Turbo and green processes to prepare ibuprofen loaded FNF/CS aerogels by scCO 2 . • Controllable drug delivery of BCS class II drug and excellent exudate uptake. • Ibu-15 % (w/w) FNF/CS achieved high drug loading (18 %) and remarkable drug encapsulation efficiency (80 %).