Production of polymeric micro- and nanostructures with tunable properties as pharmaceutical delivery systems

The production of novel graft copolymers based on poly-ε-caprolactone (PCL) and polyaspartamide are useful torealize structures for potential biomedical applications. Here, the synthesis of pegylated PCL/polyhydroxyethylaspartamide (PHEA) graft copolymers (PHEA-g-SUCC-PCL-g-PEG) with tunable composition, was achieved byfollowpling a synthetic strategy that involved first the grafting of preformed PCL on PHEA backbone, thenpolyethylen glycol (PEG), by using 1,10 -carbonyldiimidazole (CDI) to speed up the condensation reaction. Graftcopolymers with a Derivatization Degree (DD) in PCL ranging between 1.1 and 4.4 mol% were obtained, andprocessable with different technologies for the realization of micro- and nanostructures for biomedical applications.Pegylated graft copolymers, PHEA-g-SUCC-PCL-g-PEG, with a DDPEG of about 3.9 mol% were synthesized,and starting from these materials, structures such as fibers, micro- and nanoparticles were produced bydifferent methods, such as microfluidics and nanoprecipitation.