Precise control over the release of drugs and nucleic acids from a delivery scaffold can solve the problem of non-specific toxicity, side effects, and premature degradation of the therapeutic modalities. This study focuses on the design of electro-responsive, thin film drug delivery systems (TF-DDS) as a stimuli-guided delivery scaffold that utilizes electrical energy as drug-releasing stimulus and using doxorubicin (DOX) as a model anticancer drug, our initial study evaluates the potential of cellulose nanofiber (CNF) as the building material of the TF-DDS. These systems were prepared by different techniques, such as solvent casting & lyophilization of cellulose with or without gelatin as a reinforcing agent. Mechanical properties, thermal stability, wettability, porosity, and in vitro drug release properties of the scaffolds were evaluated. Our results showed drug release properties of these scaffolds were fundamentally related to the compositional and microstructural features of the films. An in-vitro cell culture study showed that CNF-based TF-DDS released DOX in a controlled fashion to suppress the proliferation of pancreatic cancer cells (MIA PaCa-2 and PANC-1) in a time-dependent fashion. Further study involved the incorporation of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) as an electroconductive disperse phase within the scaffold to render the system electro-responsive. We hypothesize that the pulsatile electrical stimulus will produce controlled mechanical relaxation of the matrix resulting in stimuli-sensitive drug release. Overall our work and result will shed light on different approaches to render cellulose-based systems electro-responsive and identify how electrical control of drug release from these scaffolds can be modulated based on the strength, duration, and frequency of the applied electric field.

Cellulose-based electro-responsive thin film drug delivery systems

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