Porous Sulfonated PVA Microspheres for Controlled Molecules Delivery: A Methylene Blue Study

Abstract

 Functionalized PVA microspheres are commonly used as drug carriers in the fields of pharmacy and medicine. With this aim, we obtained and test novel PVA-PVAc-AMPS sulfonated microspheres by free radical suspension polymerization of vinyl acetate (VAc) and 2-acrylamido-2-methyl-1-propanesulfonic sodium salt acid (AMPS), followed by saponification. The microspheres exhibited a porous core-shell structure with excellent sphericity, a mean size of 171 µm, and elasticity modulus comparable with commercial particles currently used in medical applications. Methylene blue (MB) which has shown similar adherence properties as the cytostatic drug doxorubicin was used as a model drug to study the drug loading/release characteristics of the sulfonated microspheres prepared in this work. 20.7 mg g^-1 MB per gram of microspheres was the maximum adsorption capacity in two hours using UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy. The experimental data on adsorption were well described by the pseudo-second order kinetic model. The in vitro release profile of loaded MB microspheres showed rapid desorption in the first hour followed by slower MB release, reaching 8.6% elution at four hours. The diffusion process was found to be dominant in the MB desorption from the PVA-PVAc-AMPS microspheres.