Executive Summary : | Essential oils (EOs) are naturally occurring functional ingredients of plants that can inhibit the existence and growth of various microorganisms. Due to their volatile and hydrophobic nature this potential therapeutic alternative has limited applications in the biomedical field so far. Therefore, the effective utilisation of these plant derivatives as a source of antimicrobial/antibacterial agents in the pharma and agriculture sector is challenging. Recent researches have demonstrated that encapsulation of essential oils having potent antimicrobial activity could offer a wide range of applications including medical and agricultural fields. The essential oil encapsulation is achieved by the dissolution in a suitable bio-carrier matrix, which may form inclusion complexes with their components. This encapsulation process with a suitable encapsulating agent improves characteristics of EO such as transformation of liquid compounds into crystalline nature; masking unpleasant odours and tastes of some compounds if any; improving the physical and/or chemical stability; and stabilizing volatile components by lowering or eliminating any losses through evaporation process etc. Cyclodextrin derivatives from starch or cellulose (α-, β- and γ-CD) with a polymer can be effectively used for encapsulation purposes by different methods of preparation like ionic gelation, co-precipitation, freeze-drying, spray-drying etc. These CD’s have a unique structure with a hydrophobic interior and a hydrophilic surface, which can form inclusion complexes with a wide variety of guest molecules. Evidence for host-guest non-covalent interaction of such complexes may be obtained by various analytical techniques including NMR spectroscopy, UV–visible spectroscopy, circular dichroism, optical rotatory dispersion, infrared/FT-IR spectroscopy, Mass spectrometry, TLC and powder X-ray diffraction techniques. Recent researches in this area have shown various reports regarding cyclodextrin encapsulated EO complexes that could offer promising results when used in biomedical applications especially as wound dressing nano-encapsulated fibrous material, food packaging material etc. This project work is mainly focused on evaluating promising antimicrobial essential oils by screening EO bearing medicinal plants and the production of cyclodextrin-EO polymer matrix and to evaluate its antimicrobial and cytotoxic activities in order to develop it as a biomaterial for various biomedical applications. |