abstract
Chronic wounds are physical traumas that significantly impair the quality of life of over 40 million patients worldwide. Aerogels are nanostructured dry porous materials that can act as carriers for the local delivery of bioactive compounds at the wound site. However, aerogels are usually obtained with low drug loading yields and poor particle size reproducibility and urges the implementation of novel and high-performance processing strategies. In this work, alginate aerogel particles loaded with vancomycin, an antibiotic used for the treatment of Staphylococcus aureus infections, were obtained through aerogel technology combined with gel inkjet printing and water-repellent surfaces. Alginate aerogel particles showed high porosity, large surface area, a well-defined spherical shape and a reproducible size (609 +/- 37 mu m). Aerogel formulation with vancomycin loadings of up to 33.01 +/- 0.47 mu g drug/mg of particle were obtained with sustained-release profiles from alginate aerogels for more than 7 days (PBS pH 7.4 medium). Overall, this novel green aerogel processing strategy allowed us to obtain nanostructured drug delivery systems with improved drug loading yields that can enhance the current antibacterial treatments for chronic wounds.
keywords
DRUG-DELIVERY; HPLC METHOD; NANOPARTICLES; PARTICLES; TOOL
subject category
Polymer Science
authors
Remuinan-Pose, P; Lopez-Iglesias, C; Iglesias-Mejuto, A; Mano, JF; Garcia-Gonzalez, CA; Rial-Hermida, MI
our authors
João Mano
Vice Directoracknowledgements
This research was funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion, MICINN, Spain (PID2020-120010RB-I00), Xunta de Galicia, Spain (ED431C 2020/17) and Agencia Estatal de Investigacion, Spain (AEI). Work carried out in the framework of the COST-Action Advanced Engineering of aeroGels for Environment and Life Sciences (AERoGELS, ref. CA18125) funded by the European Commission.