In recent decades, temperature/pH dual responsive amphiphilic polymers have attracted the interest of researchers as they can perform certain functions by changing hydrophilic and hydrophobic balances corresponding to changes in the external environment. These types of amphiphilic polymers are very useful, especially for drug delivery, tissue engineering, biotechnology and other related fields.
However, most temperature/pH dual responsive polymers are prepared with petroleum chemical monomers as main raw material. This results in its limited applicability due to their toxicity and poor biocompatibility. In recent years, many researchers have focused their work on biomass derivatives to improve the temperature/pH dual responsiveness of polymers.
Jong Kwang Hyok, a section head at the Faculty of Applied Chemistry, has successfully synthesized a novel type of temperature/pH dual responsive polymer, PyHES (2-hydroxy-3-(2-propynyloxy) propyl hydroxyethyl starch)-DMAET (2-(dimethylamino) ethanethiol).
He prepared temperature-responsive polymer PyHES via hydrophobic modification of hydroxyl groups in hydroxyethyl starch (HES) with propynylglycidyl ether (PGE); subsequently, he connected a pH-responsive tertiary amine group to the propynyl group via a thiol-yne click reaction.
As PyHES-DMAET has pH-responsive amino groups and hydrophobic thioether groups, its aqueous solution exhibits excellent temperature/pH dual sensitivity, i.e., a good transference between hydrophobic (or self-assembly) and hydrophilic (or swelling) states resulting from changes in temperature/pH values. These properties can be exploited for hydrophobic drug release.
The experimental results showed that drug release reached 96% at 37℃ and a pH of 6.5, and that the drug-loading capacity of PyHES-DMAET increased with the degree of substitution (DS) of the hydrophobic propynyl groups in the PyHES, and the maximum drug-loading capacity for doxorubicin (DOX) achieved in the study was 33 wt%.
More information about this is in his paper “Temperature and pH dual responsive 2-(dimethylamino)ethanethiol modified starch derivatives via a thiol-yne reaction for drug delivery” presented to SCI Journal “Colloid and Polymer Science”.
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