Preparation of hyaluronic acid and copolymeric hyaluronic acid: sucrose particles as tunable antibiotic carriers

Hyaluronic acid (HA) and copolymeric HA:Sucrose (HA:Suc) particles were synthesis with two different crosslinkers (Xs), divinyl sulfone (DVS) and glycerol diglycidyl ether (GDE) in 0.5–20 μm size range. The sustenance potential of HA:Suc particles in bacterial growth media was examined with time, up to 72 h incubation time in the cultivation of various gram-negative (GN) and gram-positive (GP) bacterial strains. Furthermore, ciprofloxacin, model drug was loaded into HA and HA:Suc particles few times by chemical conjugations; e.g., 1st and 2nd chemical conjugations and named as 1C and 2C, respectively. To increase the drug loading amount into HA-based particles, 2C particles was placed in drug solution for physical adsorption (2C + A). Therefore, drug carrier capacity of HA-based particles was enhanced almost 6.5-fold with the highest ciprofloxacin release from HA particles was 43.47 ± 2.36 mg/g within 120 h. The antimicrobial susceptibility studies revealed that ciprofloxacin-loaded copolymeric HA:Suc particles with 2C + A loading process has the highest antimicrobial effects. The minimum inhibition concentration (MIC) against E. coli, P. aeruginosa, S. aureus, and B. subtilis strains were found to range between 0.25–1 mg/mL, and an increasing inhibition trend was observed by increasing the incubation time up to 72 h due to linear drug release profile from HA particles.