Polysaccharide-based aerogels as drug carriers

The application of aerogels as drug delivery system was successfully demonstrated for silica aerogels previously. However, being biocompatible silica matrices are not biodegradable, which is a certain disadvantage for a number of pharmaceutically oriented applications. For these purposes biodegradable materials are beneficial. Supercritical drying of polysaccharide gels results in highly porous biodegradable aerogel matrices with large surface areas. Structural properties of the polysaccharide aerogels depend on the preparation method and chemical nature of the gel phase. In this work different polysaccharide precursors (starch, alginate) were used to produce aerogels. which later on were loaded with the drugs ibuprofen and paracetamol. Furthermore release kinetics was studied in vitro. Thereby it has been shown that the release rate depends primary on the properties of the matrix. The presented results demonstrate for the first time the high potential of polysaccharide aerogels for pharmaceutical applications. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.