Summary: | 碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 材料科學與工程學系所 === 106 === Self-assembly has been an interesting and important dynamic behavior for a materials possessing amphiphilic nature, and this is frequently observed in nature. What is more critical and also a need to explore while its association with drug molecule(s), for encapsulation and release in order to achieve improved therapeutic efficacy, compared with conventional free-drug protocol. Here, we employ a novel amphiphilic biodegradable and biocompatible materials, carboxymethyl-hexanoyl chitosan (termed as CHC), which has been successfully synthesized in this lab. The self-assemble dynamics and nanostructural evolution of the CHC in the presence and absence of hydrophobic drug were intensively explored through the use of H-NMR, FTIR, DLS, GPC, TEM, circular dichroism (CD) and small-angle electron diffraction. The stability of the self-assembled nanostructure was measured and was found to become dynamic with drug presence, suggesting drug release leads to nanostructural variation over a certain extent. A corresponding drug release dynamic was then characterized in this work and a full explanation on nanostructure-associated drug elution from a given nanocarrier was proposed, which will be important for nanomedicine design. This work also confirmed a nanostructural stability and minimized critical micellar concentration for the CHC, and high encapsulation efficiency for a hydrophobic anti-cancer drug achievable, ensuring a great potential application in biomedicine.
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