Copaiba essential oil loaded-nanocapsules film as a potential candidate for treating skin disorders: preparation, characterization, and antibacterial properties

Infections have emerged as a novel target in managing skin and mucosa diseases. Bacterial resistance to anti-microbials and biofilm elimination from surfaces remains a challenge. Because polymeric nanocapsules (NC) can increase antimicrobial activity, this study aimed to produce and characterize NC into chitosan films (CSF). Copaiba essential oil (CO) presents antimicrobial activity and was chosen to load NC. In addition, the antibac-terial activity was evaluated to obtain a new biodegradable polymeric platform system with the potential to treat topical diseases associated with bacterial infections. The CO-NC produced by nanoprecipitation presented par-ticle size lower than 250 nm, negative charge, and encapsulation efficiency higher than 70 %. Direct incorpo-ration of CO into CSF (CO-CSF) by casting method worsened the film's characteristics. However, incorporating CO-NC into CSF (CO-NC-CSF) avoided these drawbacks demonstrating improved physical, mechanical, morphological, and topographical properties. FTIR results demonstrated possible intermolecular interactions among the polymers and CO. The CO-NC-CSF and CO-CSF presented antibacterial properties against Staphylo-coccus aureus, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, especially the formulation containing 1 % of CO. These results indicated that CO-NC-CSF is a promising candidate for treating skin disorders.