Microgels: Drug Uptake and Release Behavior

Punjabi, Pinki B.; Chauhan, Narendra Pal Singh; Juneja, Priya; Jangid, Nirmala Kumari; Kalal, Sangeeta

doi:10.1081/e-ebpp-120049971

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…This maintained swelling at high temperatures is important in facilitating the higher observed drug loading at 70 1C, allowing hydrophobic partitioning to control the drug uptake behavior as opposed to mass transfer. 40 As mentioned above, the partitioning inside a neutral hydrogel is the result of a complex interplay between excluded-volume and hydrophobic binding effects. Given the large number of applications of these systems, this work intends to explore under a theoretical point of view different strategies to maximize the internal uptake of cosolutes (such as globular proteins or therapeutic drugs), inside a neutral hydrogel polymer network.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…[35][36][37] Analogously, it has been shown experimentally that the uptake of water-solute drugs (or ions) induced by shrunken hydrogels can be substantially increased due to the hydrophobic character of the drug molecules. [38][39][40] In concrete, Punjabi et al have recently observed that significantly more drug is taken up by each of the hydrogels (MAA-NIPAM) at 70 1C (condensed state) compared to 25 1C (swollen state). This result was attributable to the increased hydrophobicity of the microgel at higher temperatures.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Maximizing the absorption of small cosolutes inside neutral hydrogels: steric exclusion versus hydrophobic adhesion

Pérez-Mas

Martín-Molina

Quesada‐Pérez

et al. 2018

Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys.

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In this work the equilibrium absorption of nanometric cosolutes (which could represent drugs, reactants, small globular proteins and other kind of biomacromolecules) inside neutral hydrogels is studied. We specially focus on exploring, for different swelling states, the competition between the steric exclusion induced by the cross-linked polymer network constituting the hydrogel, and the solvent-induced short-range hydrophobic attraction between the polymer chains and the cosolute particle. For this purpose, the cosolute partition coefficient is calculated by means of coarse-grained grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations, and the results are compared to theoretical predictions based on the calculation of the excluded and binding volume around the polymer chains. For small hydrophobic attractions or large cosolute sizes, the steric repulsion dominates, and the partition coefficient decreases monotonically with the polymer volume fraction, ϕ. However, for large enough hydrophobic attraction strength, the interplay between hydrophobic adhesion and the steric exclusion leads to a maximum in the partition coefficient at certain intermediate polymer density. Good qualitative and quantitative agreement is achieved between simulation results and theoretical predictions in the limit of small ϕ, pointing out the importance of geometrical aspects of the cross-linked polymer network, even for hydrogels in the swollen state. In addition, the theory is able to predict analytically the onset of the maximum formation in terms of the details of the cosolute-monomer pair interaction, in good agreement with simulations too. Finally, the effect of the many-body attractions between the cosolute and multiple polymer chains is quantified. The results clearly show that these many-body attractions play a very relevant role determining the cosolute binding, enhancing its absorption in more than one order of magnitude.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%