Characterization and Degradation Behavior of Agar–Carbomer Based Hydrogels for Drug Delivery Applications: Solute Effect

Abstract

In this study hydrogels synthesized from agarose and carbomer 974P macromers were selected for their potential application in spinal cord injury (SCI) repair strategies following their ability to carry cells and drugs. Indeed, in drug delivery applications, one of the most important issues to be addressed concerns hydrogel ability to provide a finely controlled delivery of loaded drugs, together with a coherent degradation kinetic. Nevertheless, solute effects on drug delivery system are often neglected in the large body of literature, focusing only on the characterization of unloaded matrices. For this reason, in this work, hydrogels were loaded with a chromophoric salt able to mimic, in terms of steric hindrance, many steroids commonly used in SCI repair, and its effects were investigated both from a structural and a rheological point of view, considering the pH-sensitivity of the material. Additionally, degradation chemistry was assessed by means of infrared bond response (FT-IR) and mass loss.

Microwave-assisted synthesis and click chemistry as simple and efficient strategy for RGD functionalized hydrogels

“…All samples exhibited fast swelling kinetics and they reached swelling equilibrium within the first hour; their swelling equilibrium values Q are around 9.87 for ACPEG and 11.07 for ACPEG-RGD (Table 1). It is well observable that, as published in previous works 18,26,27 , swelling phenomenon exhibits high dependence on the solute loaded within the polymeric network. In this case this dependence is present, but less visible, because RGD peptide is integral with polymeric network and does not create high hindrance to gelation process.…”

Drug–Polymer Interactions in Hydrogel‐based Drug‐Delivery Systems: An Experimental and Theoretical Study

“…As a result of these reactions, AC hydrogels are anionic; this electrostatic nature was confirmed by FT‐IR and mass equilibrium swelling at different pHs 52. For consistency, we will use the same acronyms for the hydrogels as used in previous studies 53…”

Development, characterization, and in vitro evaluation of water soluble poloxamer/pluronic‐mastic gum‐gum acacia‐based wound dressing

“…New absorption peaks were visible at 1600, 2000, and 2500 cm −1 , and the intensity of the CO stretch was reduced which further confirmed the degradation of the wound dressings. Similar findings was reported by Rossi et al ., in which the CH stretch disappeared with the appearance of new peaks between 2000 and 2500 cm −1 in the biodegradation studies of carbomer 974P‐based hydrogels . Sharma et al .…”