Amphiphilic Copolymers having Saturated and Unsaturated Aliphatic Side Chains as Nano Carriers for Drug Delivery Applications

Abstract

Nano-particles with controllable particle size and shape are of great interest in biomedical applications (1). From the standpoint of drug carrier design with wide applicability to a variety of hydrophobic drugs, an effective strategy would be to prepare a simple copolymer having the property to form stable polymeric micelles which can entrap hydrophobic drugs in the core (2). In this study, we have attached saturated and unsaturated long chain acid chlorides to the copolymer of PEG and dimethyl-5-aminoisophthalate via an amide linkage in order to make the copolymers amphiphilic. Further, bioactive compounds like β-carotene, which has considerable double bond unsaturation and curcumin, which has considerable aromatic unsaturation, were encapsulated in these amphiphilic copolymers which successfully demonstrated their drug loading ability.

Keywords:

• Nanocarriers
• amphiphilic copolymers
• encapsulation
• drug delivery
• bio-active
• micelles and Novozyme-435

Acknowledgment

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, MA and the University of Delhi under the DU-DST Purse Grant.