Poloxamer-based stimuli-responsive biomaterials

Advanced materials are the combination of theory and practice. They pave the way for elegant solutions to the challenges engineers are facing in designing high-performance materials for harsh conditions. Stimuli-response polymers lie in such family as they exhibit strongly sensitive to the surrounding condition. Thanks to this capability, stimuli-responsive polymers have attracted significant attention because of being practically applied in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Poloxamer is a tri-block (ABA) copolymer composed of poly (ethylene oxide) and poly (propylene oxide), respectively as hydrophilic (A) and hydrophobic (B) blocks ending a polymer having a dual character. This amphiphilic material endows it specific features making it a superior carrier for hydrophilic/hydrophobic drug delivery. Poloxamer can self-assembly as a micelle into aqueous solutions with hydrophobic core and hydrophilic corona thanks to its amphiphilic nature. Along with amphiphilic feature, stimuli-responsive behavior of poloxamer makes possible optimizing its performance for drug release purposes with under different temperatures. Miscellaneous kinds of hybrid polymers can be achieved based on poloxamer with different stimuli-responsive features, e.g. pH- and thermal-responsive functions. This short review focuses on stimuli-responsive poloxamer-based polymers developed for biomedical applications to give a narrow angle about its today's application realm. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.