Drug delivery from polymer micelles has been widely studied for decades, but methods to precisely tune rates of drug release from micelles are limited. Here we use the mobility of the hydrophobic micelle core to tune the rate at which a covalently bound drug is released. Our drug of interest is hydrogen sulfide (H2S), a signaling gas with therapeutic potential. In this system, we appended thiol-triggered H2S donor molecules onto the hydrophobic block. Because release of H2S is triggered by cysteine, diffusion of cysteine into the hydrophobic micelle core controls the rate of release. Here we show how the careful tuning of the glass transition temperature of the core block can be used to tune the release rate of H2S over nearly an order of magnitude.

Tuning release of signaling molecules by controlling mobility in a micelle core

255th National Meeting (2018)

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