A comparative study of chitosan and poloxamer based thermosensitive hydrogel for the delivery of PEGylated melphalan conjugates

Abstract

Objective: Although the melphalan (ML) used extensively for the management of breast cancer, its clinical application is limited due to significant hemolytic activity. In the present work, a comparative analysis of two distinct in situ-based thermogelling polymers of PEGylated ML was performed.

Methods: Briefly, the PEGylated conjugate of the melphalan (MLPEG 5000) for local and sustained drug release action is loaded into two different thermogelling polymeric systems, namely chitosan- and poloxamer-based systems. The synthesized conjugate was loaded to a chitosan (MLP 5000) and poloxamer-based (MPX-CG) thermogelling injectable hydrogels. These thermogelling hydrogels were evaluated for in vitro hydrolysis, in vitro hemolytic activity. and in vitro anticancer activity.

Results: The lower percent cumulative hydrolysis was witness for both the hydrogels. MPX-CG and MLP 5000 hydrogels as predicted had shown lower percent cumulative hydrolysis of 3.31 ± 0.1 and 1.67 ± 0.1 after 6 h. The percentage hemolysis of MPX-CG and MLP 5000 even at a concentration of 32 µg/ml was found to be 39.23 ± 1.24% and 34.23 ± 2.24%, observed at 1 h, respectively. Both the hydrogels showed similar anticancer pattern, the MPX-CG hydrogel showed low cell viability of 8.4 ± 1.1% at a concentration of 150 µM and the MLP-5000 hydrogel showed slight higher cell viability (13.12 ± 5.4%) as compared with MPX-CG hydrogel.

Conclusion: Hence, from the present study it can be well understood that both the chitosan- and the poloxamer-based thermogelling hydrogel proves to be an effective drug delivery systems for the delivery of the PEGylated conjugates.

• Anti-cancer
• chitosan
• hydrogel
• MCF
• melphalan
• MTT
• poloxamer
• PEGylation

Acknowledgements

The authors want to thank the library of Pt. Ravishankar Shukla University for providing e-resources available through UGC-INFLIBNET.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article. The authors acknowledge the Department of Science and Technology (No. SR/FST/LSI-434/2010), New Delhi (SERC Division), India, for providing financial assistance under DST-FIST scheme, as well as the Maulana Azad National Fellowship (MANF) UGC, New Delhi, India, for providing financial assistance.