Development of Methods for Drug Release Evaluation from Advanced Nanoporous Anodic Alumina Structures

Identifier:  TDX:3274

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX3274

Authors:  Kapruwan, Pankaj

Abstract:
Controlled drug release at targeted sites has always been a challenging problem in therapeutic delivery approaches. In this regard, several porous nanostructured materials like silica, titania, and alumina have continuously been explored due to their ease of preparation, excellent biocompatibility, and physicochemical properties. Although the release of drug from the mentioned above structures has been previously studied, a detailed explanation of the release kinetics and their mechanisms is still yet to be established. This thesis proposes to develop a methodology to investigate the drug release from nanoporous anodic alumina. To achieve this different anodization strategies have been employed to prepare advanced nanostructures, load them with drugs and study their controlled release. By designing nanostructures with a photonic stop band in the same spectral region as the optical absorption of the drug, it is possible to obtain a measure of the amount of drug infiltrating the pores. Furthermore, the spectral region far from such absorption is used as a reference to compensate for any changes not related to the very release process. The drug infiltration has been achieved with the drop-casting method and studied thoroughly using UV-Visible spectroscopy. The drug release was studied in real-time by reflectance spectroscopy integrated in a flow cell, with the pore length and flow rate as variables. The kinetics of the drug release has been explored with a model that demonstrates a diffusion-controlled release from the nanostructures. In brief, the advanced photonic structures developed in this thesis could pave the way as a starting point in studying the drug release kinetics with the main aim of achieving a sustained drug release.