Title:

Tuning the Physical Structure and Mechanical Properties of Cyclodextrin-Dextran Hydrogels

Countless people need medication in their daily lives, and some require frequent trips to the hospital​. Not only is this expensive and inconvenient for the individual, but it adds another task to the plate of busy hospitals. Hydrogels offer convenience, able to provide a sustained release of drug over days or weeks​, necessitating a hospital trip only for the less-frequent gel injection. However, many drugs are hydrophobic, making it difficult to load them into common hydrogel systems while maintaining structural order (in other words, predictability and reliability), and efficiency​. Cyclodextrin has a hydrophobic pore, allowing for easy drug loading​ while maintaining an ordered structure. If the stiffness and crosslinking density of a hydrogel can be tuned, its release rate of a loaded drug can be tuned​ - a necessary "control knob" in the context of drug treatments with specific and highly sensitive dosages. This research does not finish the story and reach such a highly sensitive tunability. This research does show that the promising cyclodextrin-dextran hydrogel network can be tuned in both its stiffness and structure by easily controlled factors. In addition, Cyclodextrin-Dextran hydrogels may be lyophilized to yield a porous network relevant to endothelial cells. Vascularization, the growth and arrangement of endothelial cells into blood vessels, is regulated by the structure of the environment, among other factors​, and so this tunability may also find applications in the revascularization of damaged tissue. In the long term, such a hydrogel has the potential to perform both treatments at the same time.

Name

Comment*

Comments are viewable only by submitter

Captcha*