title: Multicompartment Microgel Beads for Co-Delivery of Multiple Drugs at Individual Release Rates.
abstract: Multidrug therapy may yield higher therapeutic effects as compared to monotherapy, yet its wide application has been hampered by the limitations of conventional drug delivery systems, in which not only incompatible drugs cannot be co-delivered but also the release rates of individual co-delivered drugs cannot be tuned separately. Regarding these limitations, we adopt the microfluidic electrospray technology to fabricate alginate-based multicompartment microgel beads. By using cadmium-telluride (CdTe) quantum dots (QDs) and a quenching agent as a model pair, the beads are shown to effectively separate incompatible drugs during co-delivery, and significantly prolong the time of observable fluorescence emission from QDs co-delivered with a quenching agent. Moreover, the drug release rates from different compartments can be tuned using the polymer blending technique to achieve a variety of drug release patterns. This study is one of the first to adopt the microfluidic electrospray technology to generate microgel beads with such versatility for co-delivery of multiple drugs. Our results provide evidence for the promising potential of our beads to be further developed as a carrier for multidrug therapy and other applications that require co-administration of multiple bioactive agents.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Materials Science and Centre for Functional Photonics (CFP), City University of Hong Kong , Kowloon, Hong Kong.|Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Hong Kong , Pokfulam, Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Wing-Fu
authors.initials: WF
authors.lastname: Lai
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Materials Science and Centre for Functional Photonics (CFP), City University of Hong Kong , Kowloon, Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Andrei S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Susha
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Materials Science and Centre for Functional Photonics (CFP), City University of Hong Kong , Kowloon, Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Andrey L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Rogach
mesh_terms: D016475:3T3 Cells; D000818:Animals; D019187:Cadmium Compounds; D002470:Cell Survival; D016503:Drug Delivery Systems / Q000379:methods*; D065546:Drug Liberation; D005782:Gels / Q000737:chemistry*; D057809:HEK293 Cells; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice; D008863:Microspheres; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D045663:Quantum Dots / Q000737:chemistry; D017550:Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared; D013691:Tellurium
chemical_list: D019187:Cadmium Compounds; D005782:Gels; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations; D013691:Tellurium; C028337:cadmium telluride
keywords: alginate; co-delivery; electrospray; microgels; multidrug therapy