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Long lasting mucoadhesive membrane based on alginate and chitosan for intravaginal drug delivery

  • Delivery Systems
  • Original Research
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Abstract

The intravaginal route of administration can be exploited to treat local diseases and for systemic delivery. In this work, we developed an alginate/chitosan membrane sufficiently stable in a simulated vaginal fluid and able to dissolve over time at a very slow and linear rate. The membrane demonstrated good mechanical properties both in its swollen and dry form. As a study case, we evaluated the viability of this potential drug delivery system for the treatment of bacterial vaginosis, a common disease affecting women in their reproductive age. Metronidazole was effectively included in the alginate/chitosan membrane and its bactericide effect was demonstrated against Staphylococcus aureus and Gardnerella vaginalis, simultaneously showing good biocompatibility with a cervix epithelial cell line. Since this alginate/chitosan membrane is stable in a simulated vaginal environment, is easy to fabricate and can be used for the controlled release of a model drug, it represents a promising drug delivery system for local intravaginal applications.

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Data availability

The raw/processed data required to reproduce these findings are available to download from https://zenodo.org/record/1418734#.W5uUR84zbDB (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1418734).

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF122) and Villum Fonden (Grant No. 9301) for Intelligent Drug Delivery and Sensing Using Microcontainers and Nanomechanics (IDUN). The authors would also like to acknowledge Claudio Cecone, Nicola Labovitis and Ho Duy Khiet for their initial help during the 2017 Summer School in Drug Delivery held at the Technical University of Denmark. Nanna Bild, Technical University of Denmark, is acknowledged for the drawing of the schematics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health Technology, Technical University of Denmark, Ørsteds Plads 345C, 2800 Kgs., Lyngby, Denmark

    Fabio Tentor, Sanjukta Bose Goswami & Anja Boisen

  2. Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24, 10129, Torino, Italy

    Giorgia Siccardi & Danilo Demarchi

  3. Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, via L. Giorgieri 5, I-34127, Trieste, Italy

    Pasquale Sacco

  4. Department of Medicine, Surgery and Health Sciences, University of Trieste, Piazza dell’Ospitale 1, I-34129, Trieste, Italy

    Eleonora Marsich

  5. Department of Chemistry, Technical University of Denmark, Kemitorvet 207, 2800 Kgs., Lyngby, Denmark

    Kristoffer Almdal

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  1. Fabio Tentor
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Correspondence to Fabio Tentor.

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Tentor, F., Siccardi, G., Sacco, P. et al. Long lasting mucoadhesive membrane based on alginate and chitosan for intravaginal drug delivery. J Mater Sci: Mater Med 31, 25 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10856-020-6359-y

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