Polymer gels have been applied to biomedical field with remarkable advance in the therapeutic and clinical devices. Their applications involve cell culture, tissue engineering, drug delivery system (DDS), medical sensor, and so on, in which the bio-compatibility and safety of the gels are extremely important as well as the physicochemical properties. Since in most of these in vivo and ex vivo applications the polymer gels must immediately be removed by the metabolic system after completing their temporal functions, they are expected to consist of bioabsorbable or biodegradable polymers. In the present study, we report on thermo-responsive, polylactides (PLLA and PDLA) stereocomplexed hydrogels incorporating charged polymers. The incorporation of such charged polymers is either through a block copolymer design or in a micelle solution before and/or after gel assembly. The charged polymers used are polyethyleneimine (PEI) and polyglutamic acid. In recent years PEI has received much attention as a promising vector for non-viral gene therapy. The primary, secondary and in the case of branched PEI tertiary nitrogen's have relatively high and variety of pKa values. PEI and DNA form polyion complex through the interaction of the positively charged amino groups of PEI with the negatively charged phosphate groups of DNA. In a similar mechanism polyglutamic acid can form complex with cationic proteins. We present the effect of polyions or polyplex on PLA hydrogel formation and its physical properties.

Polyionic drug carriers by PLA stereocomplexed hydrogels

240th National Meeting (2010)

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