Biodegradable polymer has been widely used in tissue engineering field as scaffolds or implants. One major problem with biodegradable polymer based implants is bacterial infection, which may cause local inflammation, tissue death, allergy and implant failure. Using antimicrobial agent(s) incorporated biodegradable polymer is a good way to avoid this problem.  A good antimicrobial biodegradable implant material is able to kill most surrounding bacteria and provides a safe environment for tissue regeneration.The purpose of our current work is developing a new drug loading system to make local antibiotic delivery to prevent implant infection. A new biodegradable elastomer Poly (glycerol sebacate) (PGS) was used in our work as drug loading carrier because of its good chemical and biological properties. Chlorhexidine was used in our experiment as antimicrobial agent and traditional herb extract berberine was added for its multiple biological functions.PGS was synthesized with reported two-step synthesis method. Drug(s) were then loaded into PGS using swell loading method to make this drug loading system. Multiple tests were taken to test the mechanical, chemical and biological properties of this drug loading system. The result of mechanical test indicated this drug loading process did not affect the mechanical property of PGS. Contact angle test showed that loaded drug(s) affects the surface wettability. All samples performed good cell compatibility. And drugs performed sustained release in our drug loading system. Among all the drug loading samples, chlorhexidine loaded PGS (C-PGS) and Berberine-Chlorhexidine loaded PGS (BC-PGS) showed good antimicrobial effect against typical gram positive and gram negative bacteria. All properties tested in this study demonstrated that the PGS based drug loading systems can be used as a good local antibiotic delivery system to reduce the possibility of implant infection and increase implant success rate.

Antimicrobial poly (glycerol sebacate) drug loading system with sustained release property

248th National Meeting (2014)

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