143Polymeric drug delivery systems are able to improve therapeutic efficacy, reduce toxicity, and can be designed to control and prolong drug release by adjusting the degradation rate of the polymer.1,2) Poly vinyl alcohol (PVA) is a biodegradable, hydrophilic polymer with distinct properties such as high degree of swelling, inherent non-toxicity and good biocompatibility. 3,4) Aliphatic polyesters such as poly (D,L-lactide) (PLA) and its copolymers with glycolic acid (PLGA) are biodegradable and biocompatible polymers with remarkably broad applications in sustained drug delivery.
5-7)Cyclodextrins (CDs) are a group of cyclic oligosaccharides. They are able to form inclusion complexes with lipophilic guest molecules which have been shown to improve aqueous solubility, dissolution rate and bioavailability of lipophilic drugs without decreasing the intrinsic ability of the lipophilic drug molecule to penetrate the biological membranes. Modified CDs, such as randomly methylated b-cyclodextrin (RM b-CD) have gained increasing popularity due to its improved water solubility and less toxicity as compared with the natural b-cyclodextrin.
8-10)One of the approaches for modulating the release of drugs from a delivery system and changing the release kinetics over a period of time is to use blends of hydrophilic and hydrophobic polymers.
11)Electrospinning utilizes high voltage source to produce nanoscale and microscale polymeric fibers with high surface area-to-volume ratio and porosity. 1,12,13) When the electrostatic charge exceeds the surface tension of the solution, the fiber jet travels from the syringe nozzle to the electrically charged ground collector and allows the solvent to evaporate, thus leading to the deposition of the non-woven solid polymer fiber on the surface of the metallic target collector. Multi-layered nanofiber mat is obtained by sequentially electrospinning the second polymer solution on the same target collector as the first polymer. This strategy helps to compensate the limitation of the individual polymers while the inherent advantage of both the polymers can be obtained in a single fiber mat. [14][15][16][17] The aim of this work is the preparation of haloperidol loaded nanofiber via electrospinning of hydrophobic, PLA and PLGA, and hydrophilic polymers, PVA and RM b-CD. We intend to demonstrate that multi-component/multilayered polymeric mixture influence the physical and biological properties of electrospun fibers. The nanofiber morphology, structure, diameter of the polymeric nanofiber mats were investigated by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), and fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) measurements. The release characteristics of haloperidol from the drug-loaded fiber mats were investigated.
ExperimentalMaterials PLA (R 203H with inherent viscosity of 0.34 dl/g), PLGA (73 : 27 and 48 : 52) RG 503, RG 755S with inherent viscosity of 0.63 dl/g and 0.52 dl/g were a kind gift from Boehringer Ingelheim (Ingelheim, Germany). PVA Mw 70000-100000 and haloperidol were purchased from S...