Chitosan and phospholipid assisted topical fusidic acid drug delivery in burn wound: Strategies to conquer pharmaceutical and clinical challenges, opportunities and future panorama

Burn is the immense public health issue globally. Low and middle income countries face extensive deaths owing to burn injuries. Availability of conventional therapies for burns has always been painful for patients as well as expensive for our health system. Pharmaceutical experts are still searching reliable, cheap, safe and effective treatment options for burn injuries. Fusidic acid is an antibiotic of choice for the management of burns. However, fusidic acid is encountering several pharmaceutical and clinical challenges like poor skin permeability and growing drug resistance against burn wound microbes like Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Therefore, an effort has been made to present a concise review about molecular pathway followed by fusidic acid in the treatment of burn wound infection in addition to associated pros and cons. Furthermore, we have also summarized chitosan and phospholipid based topical dermal delivery systems customized by our team for the delivery of fusidic acid in burn wound infections on case-to-case basis. However, every coin has two sides. We recommend the integration of in-silico docking techniques with natural biomacromolecules while designing stable, patient friendly and cost effective topical drug delivery systems of fusidic acid for the management of burn wound infection as future opportunities.