Galactosylated Chitosan Grafted Polycarprolactone Nanoparticles Used As Liver Drug Delivery

In this thesis, galactose moiety used as the hapatocellular carcinoma cells (HepG2) anchorage was covalently coupled with chitosan derivatives, chitosan-g-polycaprolactone copolymers (CS-g-PCL). In particular, cationic CS-g-PCL copolymers were synthesized with a facile one-pot manner via ring-opening polymerization ofε-CL onto the hydroxyl groups of chitosan by using methanesulfonic acid as solvent and catalyst. The resultant brush-like copolymers, galactosylated chitosan-g-polycaprolactone (Gal-CS-g-PCL), were used to fabricate nano-particles loaded with curcumin, in order to deliver curcumin towards to hapatocellular carcinoma cells in a targeted and sustained manner. And water-insoluble antitumor drug, curcumin, was easily encapsulated into Gal-CS-g-PCL nanoparticles. It was found that most Gal-CS-g-PCL nanoparticles showed well-defined spherical morphologies with narrow particles-size distributions ranging from around 150nm to 350nm and the drug encapsulation efficiency (EE) and drug loading (DL)of the nanoparticles increased from 64.3% to 84.6% and 6.43% to 8.66%, respectively, whereas their accumulative drug release showed a tendency increase due to the enhanced hydrophobic interaction between hydrophobic drug and hydrophobic PCL segments in Gal-CS-g-PCL. Besides, Gal-CS-g-PCL nanoparticles loaded-curcumin showed much higher toxicity as compared to blank Gal-CS-g-PCL particles. The results suggested the potential utilization of curcumin-loaded Gal-CS-g-PCL nanoparticles as carriers of hydrophobic drugs with the improving the delivery and release properties.