Abstract

Chitosan is a nature-based polymer with low toxicity, excellent biocompatibility and biodegradability. However, the intractable solubility of chitosan in water and most conventional solvents hampers its biomedical applications. Following the dissolution method for dissolving chitosan in plain water developed by us, chitosan was dissolved in ionic liquid followed by overnight freezing at −20 °C and subsequent solvent exchange with plain water at room temperature. In this study, we fabricated a drug-carrying chitosan film via solution casting and air-drying by using the plain water-based chitosan solution. Specifically, brimonidine tartrate (BT), an antiglaucoma drug, was dissolved in the plain-water based solution and used to prepare BT-loaded chitosan film, i.e., chitosan-BT film. The resulting film is transparent, structurally stable, and mucoadhesive. Micro-sized antiglaucoma BT drug crystals form and are well dispersed in the chitosan film. The chitosan-BT film enables BT to have a high corneal permeability with fast drug release kinetics for potential ocular drug delivery.

Department(s)

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering

Comments

This work was supported, in part, by the National Institutes of Health ( R01EY024072 ) (HY) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 3332019100 , 2019PT320028 ) (BL).

Keywords and Phrases

Brimonidine; Chitosan; Glaucoma; Ionic liquid; Plain water

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

2452-199X

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Final Version

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2020 The Authors, All rights reserved.

Creative Commons Licensing

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Publication Date

01 Sep 2020

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