Chitosan microbeads with MNP on printed electrodes for electric stimulus responsive drug delivery

摘要

Over the last few decades, various drug delivery systems (DDS) have been fabricated to overcome limitations of direct drug administration like solubility, short circulation lifetime, low tissue specificity, etc. Several of these DDS are also capable of controlling the passive drug release profile in response to a stimulus. This work describes a novel stimuli responsive DDS that alters its normal elution profile to release a higher drug amount when electric pulses are provided as excitation. The DDS is in form of microbeads made from chitosan cross linked with polyethylene glycol dimethacrylate, containing magnetite nanoparticles and vancomycin as the drug of interest. Silver (Ag) Inter-Digitated Electrodes (IDE) on Polyimide films were printed using a material printer and placed on the DDS. Two separate stimuli, each of 30 s duration were applied to the DDS via the IDE. The stimulated groups showed vancomycin release increased by 75% and 51% after the first and second stimuli respectively, in comparison to samples that were not stimulated. This preliminary work shows promising mechanism of a multiple- stimuli responsive DDS.