Abstract
Microparticles with strong adherence are expected as efficient drug delivery vehicles. Herein, we presented an ingenious hydrogel microparticle recapitulating the adhesion mechanism of Boston ivy tendrils adhesive discs (AD) for durable drug delivery. The particles were achieved by replicating a silica colloidal crystal aggregates assembled in a droplet template after rapid solvent extraction. Due to their unique shape, the nanostructure, and the sticky hydrogel component, such novel microparticles exhibited prominent adhesive property to the wet tissue environment. It was demonstrated that the bioinspired microcarriers loading with dexamethasone had a good therapeutic effect for ulcerative colitis due to the strong adhesion ability for prolonging the maintenance of drug availability. These virtues make the biomimetic microparticles potentially ideal for many practical clinical applications, such as drug delivery, bioimaging, and biodiagnostics.
Highlights
Over the past years, tremendous progress has been made in particulate drug carriers for safer and more efficient drug delivery [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
The microfluidic device consisted of two capillaries intersecting at a junction to form a coflow geometry (Figure S1), where an aqueous suspension of silica nanoparticles was set as the inner phase and the solvent extractant was set as the outer phase
The aqueous solvent in the droplet was rapidly removed by the organic extractant and the silica colloids gradually self-assembled into an adhesive discs (AD)-like morphology due to the unbalanced extraction ratio [24, 25], as shown in Figures 2(b) and 2(c)
Summary
Tremendous progress has been made in particulate drug carriers for safer and more efficient drug delivery [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. The geometrical features of the drug vehicles play an important role as it determines the adhesion and motion profile in the physiological environment [12, 13]. Due to the dinky contact area with a target biological substrate, the adhesion propensity and binding probability of these particles are usually insufficient, which hinders the long-term maintenance of drug concentration, and reducing the overall drug delivery efficiency [14]. Emerging requirements have been raised to developing microparticles with a more elaborate, multiscale structural design, and strong adhesion performance as drug delivery carriers
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