Interaction of Ionic Surfactants with a Hydrophobic Modified Thermosensitive Polymer

Efficacy of several additives to modulate the phase behavior of biomedical polymers: A comprehensive and comparative outlook

Several new classes of polymeric materials are being introduced with unique properties. Thermoresponsive polymers (TRPs) are one of the most fascinating and emerging class of biomaterials in biomedical research. The design of TRPs with good response to temperature and its ability to exhibit coil to globular transition behavior near to physiological temperature made them more promising materials in the field of biomaterials and biomedicines. Instead of numerous studies on TRPs, the mechanistic interplay among several additives and TRPs is still not understood clearly and completely. The lack of complete understanding of biomolecular interactions of various additives with TRPs is limiting their applications in interdisciplinary science as well as pharmaceutical industry. There is a great need to provide a collective and comprehensive information of various additives and their behavior on widely accepted biopolymers, TRPs such as poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM), poly(vinyl methyl ether) (PVME), poly(N-vinylcaprolactum) (PVCL) and poly(ethylene glycol)-poly(propylene glycol)-poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG-PPG-PEG) in aqueous solution. Obviously, as the literature on the influence of various additives on TRPs is very vast, therefore we focus our review only on these four selected TRPs. Additives such as polyols, methylamines, surfactants and denaturants basically made the significant changes in water structure associated to polymer via their entropy variation which is the direct influence of their directly or indirectly binding abilities. Eventually, this review addresses a brief overview of the most recent literature of applications based phase behavior of four selected TRPs in response to external stimuli. The work enhances the knowledge for use of TRPs in the advanced development of drug delivery system and in many more pharmaceutical applications. These kinds of studies provide powerful impact in exploring the utility range of polymeric materials in various field of science.

An efficient study to reach physiological temperature with poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) in presence of two differently behaving additives

HYPOTHESIS

The new findings in the field of polymeric materials expanding their applications in improving the quality of health care are of primary concern. Undoubtedly, the alteration in surface properties of polymeric materials on addition of different additives may provide a step forward towards their better implications in many areas of science. In this regard, the interactions of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) with two differently behaving additives may lead to a new method to carry the phase transition temperature of PNIPAM more near to body temperature so that it can be easily used in drug delivery through intravenous or oral insertion.

EXPERIMENTS

Individually, the addition of sodium dodceylsulfate (SDS) and trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) is increasing and decreasing the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of PNIPAM as compared to classical LCST of PNIPAM in aqueous solution, respectively. In the present study, we try to emphasis the role of mixed SDS and TMAO environment in varying ratios on the phase transition behaviour of PNIPAM. Many biophysical techniques are employed such as UV-visible spectroscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy and dynamic light scattering (DLS), Laser Raman spectroscopy technique and Field emission scanning electron Microscopy (FESEM) for this part of work.

FINDINGS

The SDS is observed to form globules with PNIPAM segments and do not lead to turbidity of solution for the concentration greater than 10 µM. The negatively charged SDS bound PNIPAM globules that do not allow PNIPAM to associate, however; TMAO leads to turbid solution resulted from the hydrophobic association of PNIPAM. SDS is found to be very effective in increasing the LCST up to 62.8 ^°C even at very low (7.5 mM) concentration as compared to decreasing efficiency of TMAO where LCST reaches up to 29.4 ^°C for 0.75 M however, their mixture in specified concentration (1 mM SDS and 0.1 M TMAO) can bring the LCST of PNIPAM very near to body temperature (i.e. ∼36 ^°C) that is quiet promising for its use in target delivery engineering. TMAO ability to counteract the adverse effect of SDS is the main core reason in getting LCST near to body temperature.