doi:10.1021/acsabm.0c00419engGarcía-Salinas, S.Gámez, E.Asín, J.De Miguel, R.Andreu, V.Sancho-Albero, M.Mendoza, G.Irusta, S.Arruebo, M.Efficiency of Antimicrobial Electrospun Thymol-Loaded Polycaprolactone Mats in VivoART-2020-118331Due to the prevalence of antimicrobial resistant pathogens, natural products with long-term antimicrobial activities are considered as potential alternatives. In this work, polycaprolactone (PCL) electrospun fibers with mean diameters around 299 nm and loaded with 14.92 ± 1.31% w/w thymol (THY) were synthesized. The mats had appropriate elongation at break (74.4 ± 9.5%) and tensile strength (3.0 ± 0.5 MPa) to be potentially used as wound dressing materials. In vivo studies were performed using eight to ten week-old male SKH1 hairless mice. The infection progression was evaluated through a semiquantitative method and quantitative polymerase chain reaction. The analyses of post-mortem samples indicated that THY-loaded PCL fibers acted as inhibitors of Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923 strain growth being as efficient as chlorhexidine (CLXD). Histopathological and immunohistochemical studies showed that the PCL-THY-treated wounds were almost free of an inflammatory reaction. Therefore, wound dressings containing natural compounds can prevent infection and promote wound healing and prompt regeneration. Copyright2020http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/10153210.1021/acsabm.0c00419http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/101532oai:zaguan.unizar.es:101532info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EUR/ERC-2013-CoG-614715info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MINECO/CTQ2014-52384-RACS Applied Bio Materials 3, 5 (2020), 3430-3439All rights reservedhttp://www.europeana.eu/rights/rr-f/info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess