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Functionalized organic nanotubes with highly tunable crosslinking site density for mechanical enhancement and pH-controlled drug release of nanocomposite hydrogels

Polymer Journal volume 54, pages 67–78 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Organic nanotubes (ONTs) have attracted growing attention in biomedical applications because of their unique inner and outer nanospaces. Here, ONTs were functionalized and hybridized with poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) to construct nanocomposite hydrogels, with the aim of enhancing their mechanical strength and controlling their release properties. These nanoengineered hydrogels have 4-fold greater mechanical stiffness than unreinforced hydrogels and show a more stable network. The effects of ONT concentration and crosslinkable site density on the hydrogel mechanical properties were systematically assessed. Moreover, the incorporation of ONTs enabled simple and effective post-loading of the model drug, as well as a sustained drug release profile from the hydrogels. These results provide a novel method to generate mechanically enhanced nanocomposite hydrogels with improved drug delivery in an easy, efficient and tunable manner, and the obtained nanocomposite hydrogels may have potential applications in drug delivery and other related bioapplications.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a KAKENHI from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (grant no. JP18K09469).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nanomaterials Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba Central 5, 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8565, Japan

    Dongwei Wu, Wuxiao Ding & Naohiro Kameta

  2. Department of Applied Biochemistry, Institute of Biotechnology, 4/3-2, Technische Universität Berlin, Gustav-Meyer-Allee 25, 13355, Berlin, Germany

    Dongwei Wu

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China

    Dongwei Wu

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  1. Dongwei Wu
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  2. Wuxiao Ding
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Contributions

D. Wu and W. Ding conceived and planned the experiments. D. Wu took the lead in conducting the experiments, analyzing the data and writing the mannuscript. W. Ding contributed to the final version of the manuscript. N. Kameta commented on the manuscript writing.

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Correspondence to Wuxiao Ding.

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Wu, D., Ding, W. & Kameta, N. Functionalized organic nanotubes with highly tunable crosslinking site density for mechanical enhancement and pH-controlled drug release of nanocomposite hydrogels. Polym J 54, 67–78 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41428-021-00556-1

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