No abstract

The CNT sponge-based 3D frame hydrogel showed remarkable responses to electrical and thermal stimuli, exhibited excellent controllable/switchable drug delivery, and has great potential in biomedical engineering and medicine applications.

Various drug delivery techniques have contributed significantly to medical practice. In particular, molecular imprinting is a suitable method to increase the drug-loading efficiency in limited 3D spaces, such as hydrogels....

As an anti-cancer drug, paclitaxel (PTX) is known to be effective for treating patients with ovarian cancer. Not only do dose density and side effects of PTX represent a certain difficulty in chemotherapy, but also cause problems related to its poor water solubility during the administration. From the dose-density concept, we hypothesized that continuous release of PTX could increase the duration of exposure to tumor cells and may be an effective ovarian cancer treatment for patients. Herein, we developed highly water-soluble and multi-temperature-responsive PTX delivery systems to treat ovarian cancer. This was accomplished by entrapping the hydrophobic PTX in poly(NIPAAm-co-BVIm) micelles engineered to deliver drugs (pNIB/PTX). Specifically, the pNIB/PTX-3 complex containing 74 μg PTX loaded at 25 °C showed a rapid release of PTX initially (5.9 %/day) during the first five days at 37 °C. The release rates decreased (1.1 %/day) over the following month, indicating a multi-step release. In orthotopic ovarian cancer mouse models, the pNIB/PTX complex resulted in a six-fold greater therapeutic effect with a single intraperitoneal injection than weekly PTX treatment alone in vitro using two human ovarian cancer cell lines, HeyA8 and SKOV3ip. Moreover, the tumor weights in HeyA8 and SKOV3ip1 models were remarkably decreased with the pNIB/PTX complex compared to the controls. The good water solubility and temperature-dependent release of PTX carriers are highly effective for short-term and long-term delivery. This multi-step drug delivery may be used as a potential candidate for the treatment of patients with ovarian cancer.