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Controlled Self-assembly of Thermo-responsive Amphiphilic H-shaped Polymer for Adjustable Drug Release

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Abstract

Despite the fact that some progress has been made in the self-assembly of H-shaped polymers, the corresponding self-assemblies that respond to external stimulus and are further utilized to adjust the release of drugs are still deficient. The stimuli-responsive segments with amphiphilic H-shaped structure are generally expected to enhance the controllability of self-assembly process. The synthesis and self-assembly behavior of thermo-responsive amphiphilic H-shaped polymers with poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), polytetrahydrofuran (PTHF) and poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide) (PNIPAM) as building blocks are reported in this paper. The inner architecture structure and size of complex micelles formed by H-shaped self-assemblies were effectively adjusted when the solution temperature was increased above the lower critical solution temperature of PNIPAM segments. Furthermore, it was found that the architecture of self-assemblies underwent a transition from the complex micelles based on primary micelles with hybrid PEG/PNIPAM shells to large complex micelles based on primary micelles with hybrid PTHF/PNIPAM cores and PEG shells during the thermal-induced self-assembly process. The adjustable release rate of doxorubicin (DOX) from the DOX-loaded complex micelles and basic cell experiments further proved the feasibility of these self-assemblies as the thermal-responsive drug delivery system.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21674086) and Scientific Research Program Funded by Shaanxi Provincial Education Department (No. 17JK0103).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shaanxi University of Science and Technology, Xi’an, 710021, China

    Yang Bai

  2. Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Material Physics and Chemistry under Extraordinary Conditions and Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Macromolecular Science and Technology, School of Science, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710072, China

    Yang Bai & Wei Tian

  3. Department of Pharmacy, Eastern Hepatobiliary Surgery Hospital, The Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, 200438, China

    Fang-Yuan Xie

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  1. Yang Bai
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  2. Fang-Yuan Xie
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  3. Wei Tian
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Correspondence to Wei Tian.

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Invited review for special issue of “Supramolecular Self-Assembly”

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Bai, Y., Xie, FY. & Tian, W. Controlled Self-assembly of Thermo-responsive Amphiphilic H-shaped Polymer for Adjustable Drug Release. Chin J Polym Sci 36, 406–416 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10118-018-2086-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10118-018-2086-y

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