Development of dietary fibre moringa gum and polyvinylpyrrolidone based hydrogels for drug delivery application

Abstract

In the present study, the dietary fiber moringa gum was modified through graft copolymerization with PVP in the presence of NN’-MBA as crosslinker to form a three dimensional network structure in the form of copolymeric hydrogels. These hydrogels were characterized by cryo-SEM, AFM, FTIR, 13C NMR spectroscopy and swelling studies to establish the hydrogel structure. The properties of gum based hydrogels, like network parameters, blood compatibility, antioxidant activity, mucoadhesion, porosity and degradation were determined along with drug release profile. The release profile inferred the sustained release of antibiotic drug meropenem from porous hydrogels obeyed non-Fickian diffusion mechanism. The gum based hydrogels were found non-hemolytic, mucoadehsive and antioxidant in nature with optimum pore size 9.98 nm and crosslink density 16.23 × 10−5 mol cm−3. Overall, these gum based hydrogels could be explored as drug delivery carrier for potential biomedical applications.