Ferrogels for Potencial Uses as Drug Delivery Devices

GONZALES JIMENA SOLEDAD; MORÁN JUAN IGNACIO; ALVAREZ VERA

San Sebastian

Simposio; 11th European Symposium on Polymer Blends; 2012

Controlled drug release provides advantages over conventional routes of drugs administration such as major delivery efficiency and site-specific therapy. It has been demonstrated that incorporating a protein drug into a polymer matrix can protect the protein from proteolysis and antibody neutralization in vivo in addition to providing a controlled release vehicle. Ferrogels are stimuli-responsive polymers with promising uses as drug delivery devices. They are new kind of smart materials that respond to external magnetic field changing their structure.The poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA) is highly biocompatible, non-toxic and inexpensive polymer, it can be processed easily and has high water permeability. The PVA solutions can form physical gels by freezing-thawing (FT) process. These properties have led to the use of this polymer in a wide range of applications in medical, pharmaceutical, food, and packaging industries.The aim of this work was to obtain, characterize and apply ferrogels in adsorption and controlled release of drugs. For this purpose, ferrogels composed of PVA and magnetite NPs were synthesized by  “in-situ” precipitation of iron oxides were swelling tested in the in the presence or absence of magnetic field. For these measurement a magnetic device was designed and development in order to obtain a constant magnetic field of 220 mT.