Issue 12, 2020

Encapsulation and release of drug nanoparticles in functional polymeric vesicles

Abstract

We investigated the co-assembly of amphiphilic diblock copolymers in solutions containing drugs and functional nanoparticles using the dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) method. By controlling the size and the concentration of the functional nanoparticles, the length of the hydrophobic blocks, and the interaction parameters between the hydrophobic block/solvent and the functional nanoparticles, we obtained the desired aggregates to load drugs. The aggregates loaded with drugs can be disk-like micelles, sphere-like micelles and vesicles with functional nanoparticles on the surface. When the solvent environment changes, the drugs loaded in the functional vesicles can release into the solvent. The release content is critically dependent on the repulsive interaction between the drugs and the solvent. The dynamic curve of drug release is obtained. The result is in agreement with the experiments about drug release. Our studies showed that we can precisely control the formation of functional vesicles to load and release drugs. Loading drugs in the process of self-assembly and controlling the release have broad potential in the field of clinical medicine and adding functional nanoparticles can be of great help in drug delivery and medical diagnosis.

Graphical abstract: Encapsulation and release of drug nanoparticles in functional polymeric vesicles

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
12 Jan 2020
Accepted
20 Feb 2020
First published
20 Feb 2020

Soft Matter, 2020,16, 3088-3095

Encapsulation and release of drug nanoparticles in functional polymeric vesicles

L. Jia, R. Wang and Y. Fan, Soft Matter, 2020, 16, 3088 DOI: 10.1039/D0SM00069H

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements