Air-jet spinning corn zein protein nanofibers for drug delivery: Effect of biomaterial structure and shape on release properties

Air-Spun Silk-Based Micro-/Nanofibers and Thin Films for Drug Delivery

“…Crystal violet and rhodamine B also introduce small shoulders at 1585 cm −1 and 1589 cm −1 , respectively. These shoulders come from the model drugs themselves as they are seen on FTIR spectra of solutions of the molecules [6]. Some model drugs also introduce a shoulder at 1720 cm −1 which is likely due to C=O stretching between the protein backbone and the model drug molecules [43,44].…”

“…Amine additives have been shown to have complex interactions in the suppression or assistance of protein interactions [45] that likely cause the interactions with the silk side chain seen in this study. Alcian blue is unable to interact in the same way because it is such a large molecule that it is too big to interact with the submicrometer fiber protein structure [6]. Understanding how the physicochemical nature of various therapeutics can affect the protein folding of biomaterials can be a useful tool for creating fine-tuned drug delivery vehicles for a wide variety of purposes.…”

“…Protein-based drug delivery vehicles are an emerging field aiming to fix many of the problems with current drug delivery methods [1]. Often, these vehicles take the form of micro-/nanofibers [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] or thin films [1][2][3]5,6,9]. These types of biomaterials provide several benefits over traditional systemic delivery methods by reducing offtarget effects and improving patient compliance with lower dosage requirements [1,10].…”

“…These types of biomaterials provide several benefits over traditional systemic delivery methods by reducing offtarget effects and improving patient compliance with lower dosage requirements [1,10]. Micro-/nanofibers are of particular interest in this study as their high porosity and surfacearea-to-volume ratio allows for the efficient loading and release of various therapeutic molecules [6,8,[11][12][13]. Protein-based fibers provide the additional benefit of functionalization based on protein structure and amino acid composition in order to improve their biochemical and biophysical interactions with other molecules [14,15].…”

“…An alternative utilized in this study is air-spraying or solution spraying. In this method, compressed air is used as the driving force of fiber formation instead of electrostatics [6,11,23,24]. The polymer solution is injected into a concentric nozzle which is fed high pressure compressed air from an air compressor.…”