ABSTRACT
Various biocompatible polymers have been developed using electrospun nanofibers for local drug delivery matrices, but many of them are non-FDA-approved polymers or chemicals. Material safety should be considered in biomedical devices, but the effectiveness of electrospun nanofibers is limited with only the approved chemicals. Therefore, we considered the material in FDA-approved polymers and solvents and developed nanofibers using the general additives in the pharmaceutical industry, such as hypromellose, poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA), and Gellan. The nanofiber, mainly composed of hypromellose and PVA, was applied to a local peptide drug delivery system. Electrostatically complexed Gellan and peptide were loaded in the nanofiber by co-electrospinning. The morphology of the nanofibers with different PVA blending ratios was visualized by scanning electron microscope. The nanofiber composed of only hydrophilic polymers quickly wetted in water and became a transparent gel-like lump. A drug release test of peptide-loaded nanofiber was performed resulted in 37% of initial burst release suppression with the gellan and peptide loaded nanofiber compared with solely peptide loaded hypromellose nanofiber. In addition, higher PVA blending to hypromellose was slightly effective for sustained release of peptide compared with pure peptide-loaded hypromellose nanofiber. Therefore, we suggest the potential application of hypromellose/PVA nanofiber-loaded Gellan/peptide complex to a mucosal layer drug delivery patch.
