Antibacterial nanofibrous scaffolds with lowered cytotoxicity using keratin extracted from quail feathers

This study aims to extract keratin from quail feather wastes and incorporate it with silver nanoparticles into a synthetic biodegradable polymer in order to fabricate a nanofibrous scaffold with improved biomedical properties. Polyvinyl alcohol was used as the host polymer and spinning dopes with different amounts (0, 0.15, and 0.75 wt %) of extracted keratin and the same amount of silver nanoparticles prepared in order to fabricate scaffolds. According to the results, the scaffolds with a higher amount of extracted keratin (i.e. 0.75 wt %) provided less bead formation and more uniformity; also, they gave 99.9% and 98% of the antibacterial activity against gram negative (Escherichia coli) and gram positive (Staphylococcus aureus) bacteria, respectively. The analysis of the biological response of fibroblast cells cultured on the synthetic scaffolds exhibited remarkable improvement in comparison to the pristine (polyvinyl alcohol-Ag) scaffolds. This article concludes that the addition of extracted keratin into a polymeric matrix (polyvinyl alcohol) can improve both antibacterial properties and cell viability for the resultant scaffolds, and this qualifies them as potent candidates for biomedical applications.