Crew cut, flower-like and mixed-shaggy micelles prepared from HLH and LHL triblocks as carriers: a comparative study of encapsulation, stability and release properties

摘要

Two model triblock copolymers composed of hydrophilic (H) polyethylene glycol (PEG) and lypophilic (L) poly(butylene adipate) (PBA) have been synthesized and characterized with quite same molecular weight of each segments and different segment order: PBA-PEG-PBA and mPEG-PBA-mPEG. While LHL micelles adopt a flower-like arrangement with looped PEG on the shell, HLH micelles form a crew-cut particle with stretched hydrated PEG on the shell. The comparative investigation of the pharmaceutical properties of the obtained crewcut and flower-like micellar nanoparticles displayed advantages and disadvantages over each other. In order to exploit the advantages of both systems, the mixing has been used as a strategy. The mixed micelles with “shaggy arrangement” have been produced from the comicelling of LHL and HLH triblocks. They revealed better drug loading, encapsulation efficiency, more controlled release rates, smaller particle sizes and size distributions.