Injectable Superparamagnetic Ferrogels for Controlled Release of Hydrophobic Drugs

Abstract

A ferrogel for magnetically controlled release of drugs is prepared by integration of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles and Pluronic F127 gels. The hydrophobic drug indomethacin is loaded in the ferrogel owing to the oil‐in‐water micellar structure. The characteristic sol–gel transition property renders the ferrogel an injectable drug carrier that will be, in principle, free from surgical implant procedure.

Active scaffolds for on-demand drug and cell delivery

“…Peptides containing the arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (RGD) amino acid sequence, a ubiquitous cell-binding domain found in many extracellular matrix molecules, were covalently coupled to the alginate. Iron oxide particles with diameters ∼10 nm were embedded in the alginate, which results in a superparamagnetic gel (39). Macroporous structures with interconnected pores in the micrometer range were generated from the gels.…”

“…Recent studies have shown controlled release of a number of drugs from ferrogels subject to magnetic fields (32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37). Ferrogels have also been made biodegradable (38) and injectable (39). However, typical ferrogels for drug delivery demonstrate very limited deformation and volumetric change, and the pore sizes in most ferrogels are in the nanometer range (36), which limits transport of large molecules and cells through the gels.…”

Synthesis, Functionalization, and Design of Magnetic Nanoparticles for Theranostic Applications

“…[630] However, since ferrogels have an intrinsically hydrophilic nature, most of these studies are focused only on water-soluble drug. In this matter, a pioneering study performed by Qin et al [631] addressed the problem of effective incorporation of important hydrophobic drugs in ferrogels by employing Pluronic-F127 micelles encapsulating SPIONs. In fact, in addition to proper biocompatibility, high stability, and low toxicity features, [632] Pluronic copolymers could associate into micelles via hydrophobic interactions above a certain critical concentration and temperature.…”

“…Reproduced with permission. [631] www.advancedsciencenews.com www.advhealthmat.de on magnetic tumor targeting in CT26 tumor-bearing mice (Figures 39a,b). It was shown that uptake in tumors exposed to magnetic field (TU+) is significantly higher compared to that of unexposed (TU−) (Figure 39c).…”

Design Considerations for Magnetically Actuated Biomimetic Cilia

“…Lin, Watanabe, Kimura, Hanabusa, & Shirai, 2003;Mitsumata et al, 1999;Resendiz-Hernandez, Rodriguez-Fernandez, & GarciaCerda, 2008;Szabo, Czako-Nagy, Zrinyi, & Vertes, 2000;Zrinyi, Barsi, & Buki, 1997), and their derivative copolymers (C. L. Lin, Chiu, & Don, 2006). Also prevalent are gelatin (Saslawski, Weingarten, Benoit, & Couvreur, 1988) and copolymers of polyethylene oxide (Qin et al, 2009;Wormuth, 2001). Significantly less attention has been given to hydrophobic magnetic elastomers, which include a few instances of polydimethylsiloxane (Evans et al, 2007;Jolly, Carlson, Munoz, & Bullions, 1996;Varga, Feher, Filipcsei, & Zrinyi, 2003) and polystyrene (Timonen et al, 2010).…”