PCL, PLA, PLGA from PolySciTech used in development of long-lasting dexamethasone delivery system

 

The human body will typically metabolize or excrete pharmaceutical substances limiting the action of any drug to a few hours to a day at most. One way to compensate for this is to load the drug into a biodegradable polymer which slowly releases it over a period of time. Recently, researchers at University of Cincinnati used PCL (AP011), PLA (AP006), PLGA 90:10 (AP049), and PLGA 50:50 (AP040) from PolySciTech division of Akina, Inc. (www.polyscitech.com) to create a series of dexamethasone loaded implants. These were tested for drug release and controlled delivery behavior. This research holds promise to improve long-acting injectables in the future. Read more: Zheng, Avery, Thomas Waterkotte, Tilahun Debele, Gregory Dion, and Yoonjee Park. "Biodegradable dexamethasone polymer capsule for long-term release." Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering 40, no. 2 (2023): 452-460. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11814-022-1358-y

“We have developed sustained Dex (dexamethasone) capsule implants for sustained local delivery for inflammatory disease treatment. Four different biodegradable polymers were used as capsule materials: polycaprolactone (PCL), poly(lactic acid) (PLA), 90:10 poly(lactic-co-glycolide) (PLGA), and 50:50 PLGA. The drug release profiles from the four types of capsule were compared and the profiles were fit to a cylindrical reservoir first-order kinetics model. As a result, 50:50 PLGA showed the fastest release with the largest permeability and partition coefficient at 0.4909 nm/s and 1.9519, respectively. On the other hand, PCL showed the slowest release with the smallest permeability and partition coefficient at 0.1915 nm/s and 0.8872, respectively. The results indicate that the drug release kinetics are highly correlated with hydrophobicity of the polymer sheet: the more hydrophobic, the slower the drug release kinetics for the hydrophilic drug. The in vitro therapeutic efficacy of the Dex implant was also explored using TNF-α stimulated human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs), showing effective suppression of IL-6 levels with the implant compared to free Dex with minimal toxicity. Overall, this study suggests that the release trend of Dex from implants follows the hydrophobicity of each polymer, and the Dex implant inhibits the IL-6 expression effectively.”

Video: https://youtu.be/7K_LdZyDU6g