Page 42 - Drug Discovery and Development: Prospects and Challenges

32 / Drug Discovery and Development: Prospects and Challenges

A proof-of-concept lab-scale study was carried out in the previous
research project (Malaysia Research Assessment (MyRA) incentives
grant no. MIRGS13010010006) with the main focus of fabricating
10 L of hydrogels based on the physical crosslinking of PVA by PEG
composite with asiaticoside to meet the requirement of enhanced wound
healing capability. Various properties and wound healing capability of the
hydrogels were investigated. The hydrogel containing asiaticoside was
poured into the gel cast (15 x 15 x 0.5 cm) where each gel cast contains
approximately 100 mL of hydrogels mixture. Currently, the Ministry of
Higher Education (MOHE) has allocated RM 103,000 to our research
team through the Prototype Research Grant Scheme (PRGS). The study
focused on the upscale production of hydrogel sheets with C. asiatica
for wound dressing application.

Pegaga Extraction

C. asiatica was extracted using the soxhlet extraction technique. The
whole part of C. asiatica was first weighed using a weighing balance
and washed before being dried in a laboratory dryer. The dried plant
was then grounded to obtain fine C. asiatica powder before the soxhlet
extraction system was applied using methanol. The combined crude
extract solutions were filtered using a filter paper and evaporated using a
rotary evaporator to obtain the extract in powder form (Figure 24) (Azis
et al., 2017; Ahmed et al., 2019).
The non-conventional extraction method was also performed using
the supercritical fluid extraction, which was screened using the two-level
factorial design and optimised through the Central Composite Design
(CCD) method by altering three factors (co-solvent percentage, pressure,
and temperature) on the asiaticoside content. The model obtained was
used to optimise the extraction process C. asiatica to obtain a higher
yield of asiaticoside fraction (Ruslan et al., 2020).

Optimisation of Fractionation
Two fractionation methods were performed for the optimisation of
pegaga extract, which is the fractionation using activated charcoal and
fractionation using silica gel. In the first fractionation, activated charcoal