Cytocompatible, thermostable hydrogel with utility to release drug over skin

Abstract

Hydrogel has wide applicability in biomedical applications and other industrial applications due to its strong biocompatibility. A natural polymer is eco-friendly, nontoxic, and biocompatible. There are vast varieties of natural polymers whose combination can form excellent hydrogels. Pectin and carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) are some such kinds of polymers. Plasticizer has wide applicability to enhance properties of polymers mix. Glycerol has been widely used as a plasticizer in many hydrogels but it does not render thermostability whereas, PEG is known to render thermostability. Thermostable hydrogel provides easy sterilization by using heat and pressure such as an autoclave. Small molecular size plasticizer is known to provide more space among the polymer mix and affect the porosity and water uptake capability. PEG 400 has wide applications in pharmaceutical industries and it is one of the small molecular size plasticizers. Other than this, copper ions are known to render skin regenerative property with biocidal property help in the wound healing treatment. Thus, a hydrogel was fabricated using pectin and CMC with PEG 400 as the plasticizer and copper ion as cross-linker (PCPEG2). The resulted hydrogel not only showed high thermal stability but also has high porosity, a high degree of swelling, pH sensitivity and good cytocompatibility and good drug release efficiency. The hydrogel was characterized by using FTIR, XRD, DSC, TGA/DTG/DTA, and XPS which showed good fabrication of hydrogel with high thermal stability. Thus, a novel hydrogel of pectin/CMC with PEG 400 was fabricated with enhancing properties applicable in biomedical applications and other industrial applications.