Recently, there has been interest in preparing micellar drug-delivery vehicles that expel pharmaceuticals in both a spatially and temporally controlled manner upon application of pH, magnetic, or thermal stimuli. In the work described herein, the physical properties, drug loading capacity, and release profiles of thermoresponsive block copolymers bearing a series of novel bio-derived pyrrolidone-based hydrophobic blocks were measured. The results of our investigation show that only minor adjustments to the hydrophobic block are required to tune the properties and performance of these systems that exhibit a cytotoxic effect on breast cancer cells (MCF-7 line) upon application of a thermal stimulus. Indeed, such studies are critical to gaining a comprehensive understanding of the influence that core-structure has on drug loading and thermoresponsive release phenomena, information that is vital for future core-segment design.                                                     

Thermoresponsive block copolymer micelles with tunable cores and their implications for drug delivery

247th National Meeting (2014)

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