| 초록 |
Due to the importance of controlled release in oral drug delivery system, efforts have been made to prolong the drug retention in vivo. Yet, drug adhesion to mucus and mucin present in the inner wall of digestive system for satisfying retention time has been a challenging issue. With an overwhelming library of tissue-adhesive polymers available, one practical way to improve adhesion is chemical modification of the existing polymers. In this report, we synthesized sticky chitosan suitable for biomedical applications via simple tethering of catechol groups which are abundantly found in the wet-resistant mussel adhesive proteins. In vitro residual amount of chitosan-c showed four-fold enhancement compared to unmodified chitosan and in vivo retention of chitosan-c was observed for more than 10 hours in stomach and intestine. Our results indicate that conjugation of catechol moieties might be a facile and universal way to enhance the intrinsic adhesive property of the existing polymers. |
