CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Natural biopolymers are a potential alternative tool for the development of matrices used for controlled release of molecules. Particularly, new trend in the pharma industry is the search of new generation of drug delivery systems: more reliable, less toxic, and easy to use. On the other side, many natural biopolymers are regularly used as food additives because are safe, can be produced locally avoiding transportation costs, available in large quantities, cheap, easy to handle, able to form gels, and do not required sophisticated techniques for purification and/or crosslinking. The therapies of microbial infections, cancer and others sometimes are requiring very toxic drugs. The impact of the secondary undesirable drug effects on patients has adverse social and economic impact. Typical examples are doxorubicin for the treatment of many cancer pathologies, and fluoroquinolones broadly used in mammalians for the treatment of bacterial infections. In our laboratory, we developed matrices based on natural biopolymers environmental sensitive for encapsulation of doxorubicin, fluoroquinolenes (ciprofloxacin, enrofloxacin) and sulfosalazine to be delivered in the large portion of the intestine. The matrices made of pectins, carragenins, alginates, guar gums and their derivatives were screened. Different strategies for matrix developments such as coacervates, emulsions, coatings, hybrid materials, supercritical and chemical synthesis were used for each drug. The selected matrices for compound showed drug encapsulation higher than 85 % in all cases and the main release were under simulated intestinal conditions in vitro. Effect of environmental factors such as pH, temperature, ionic strength, quelating agents, and stabilities were studied.Our studies are concluding that natural biopolymers are excellent sources of gel matrices for sustainable release of drugs.