New Hydrogels for Oral Drug Delivery

Abstract

One of the attractive applications of zero-order release devices could be using them as oral drug carriers. New hydrogels composed of two chemically independent networks [poly-(urethane) network and hydrophilic/hydrophobic balanced network], synthesized by an interpenetrating polymer networks (IPN) technique, showed versatile performance in release rate and drug loading with wide range of aqueous drug solubility. These results are obtained by simple modifications of polymer properties, such as crosslinking density of elastic network and hydrophilicity of the second network. The plausible explanation for the results obtained with highly soluble drugs is based on a resulted force balance between elastic contraction and osmotic swelling forces, while the hydrophilicity of the system directly effects the release rate of slightly soluble drugs. This new polymeric system could be a possible candidate for custom-tailored oral drug carrier.