Design of Molecular Imprinted Hydrogels for Controlled Release of Cisplatin: Evaluation of Network Density of Hydrogels

In this era of new technologies, there is an ongoing interest in enhancing the efficiency of polymer-based drug delivery systems, and molecular imprinting technique has been suggested as one step in this direction. Therefore attempts have been made to design molecular imprinted polymers (MIPs) of HEMA and MAAc for the slow release of cisplatin. The characterization of network structure of hydrogels has been studied by FTIR, swelling studies, and determining the various structural parameters of hydrogel such as polymer volume fraction in the swollen state (phi(2,s)), Flory-Huggins interaction parameter (chi(1)), molecular weight of the polymer chain between two neighboring cross-links ((M) over bar ((c) over bar)), cross-link density(rho), and the corresponding mesh size (xi) by swelling equilibrium method. Effect of the cross-linker concentration on the network parameters has been studied along with influence of the network density on drug entrapment and release of drug from the hydrogel.