Integrated experimental and computational evaluation of a Marsilea minuta-loaded hydrogel for enhanced wound-healing

Background Marsilea minuta L., a medicinal aquatic fern is of ethnopharmacological importance as per various traditional systems of medicine. It is used to treat skin disorders like wound in India.This study aims to explore the effect of the methanolic extract of M. minuta by using both in silico and in-vivo techniques in the treatment of wounds. Methods The plant material Marsilea minuta L., (MEMM) was defatted first with petroleum ether to remove the fat and then extracted with solvent methanol in a Soxhlet apparatus. GC-MS analysis was used to identify the compound annotations tentatively in the methanolic extract. The methanolic extract was prepared into a hydrogel for the investigation of wound-healing activity using the excision model in rats. The animals were divided into four groups i.e. a standard group (STD) that treated with Silver nitrate gel, a normal control group (NC) treated with Gel base, and two groups treated with the MEMM-loaded hydrogel formulations (MEMM 5 % w/v and MEMM 10 % w/v), containing six animals per group. The primary end point was wound contraction area, and additionally % of wound-healing and histopathological examination were adopted. Additionally, in-silico molecular docking was conducted against the target proteins to support our findings. One-way ANOVA was used to examine group differences, followed by Tukey's post hoc test for multiple comparisions. Results The experimental evidence shows that the 10 % w/v hydrogel group exhibits effective wound-healing activity as compared to that of the standard group. Histopathological examination confirms collagen formations, which accelerated re-epithelialization and remodelling of the wound. Further, the in-silico investigations support our findings, as the tentatively identified compounds showed moderate to strong binding affinities for wound-healing targets such as VEGFR-2, COX-2, and MMP-9. Conclusion This study concludes that M. minuta contains a diverse array of tentatively identified compounds that support the plant’s wound-healing activity. Overall, this investigation of scientific evidence supports the ethnopharmacological claim and highlights it as a promising, adjunctive natural therapeutic candidate for wound-healing.