ISSN print edition: 0366-6352 ISSN electronic edition: 1336-9075 Registr. No.: MK SR 9/7 Published monthly

Methylprednisolone release from agar-Carbomer-based hydrogel: a promising tool for local drug delivery

Filippo Rossi, Tommaso Casalini, Marco Santoro, Andrea Mele, and Giuseppe Perale

Dipartimento di Chimica, Materiali e Ingegneria Chimica “Giulio Natta”, Politecnico di Milano, Via Mancinelli 7, 20131 Milano, Italy

E-mail: giuseppe.perale@polimi.it

Abstract: A number of studies and works in drug delivery literature are focused on the understanding and modelling of transport phenomena, the pivotal point of a good scaffold design for tissue engineering. Accurate knowledge of the diffusion coefficient of an active drug plays a key role in the analysis, prediction of their kinetics and formulation of efficient drug delivery systems. In this work, the kinetics of the release of methylprednisolone from agar-Carbomer hydrogel were studied taking into consideration the different drug concentrations and clearances typically achieved in in vitro or in vivo tests. Starting from the experiments it is possible to model the transport phenomenon and to calculate the diffusion coefficient through the hydrogel matrix.

Keywords: biomaterials – diffusion – drug delivery – hydrogel – methylprednisolone

Full paper is available at www.springerlink.com.

DOI: 10.2478/s11696-011-0059-5

Chemical Papers 65 (6) 903–908 (2011)