Síntese e caracterização de copolímero candidato à incorporação e liberação controlada de fármacos

Abstract

In the last decades, a great appeal has been given to amphiphilic polymeric materials for their property of self-assembly in micelles when in selective solvents. They can be used, for instance, as systems for drug delivery and several other applications. The present study aims at the synthesis and characterization of amphiphilic block copolymers, for the formation of polymer particles as potential drug delivery systems. The copolymers were synthetysed by the RAFT technique (Reversible Addiction Fragmentation Transfer), which is a variant of controlled radical polymerization. The RAFT is based on agents of chain transfer, which allow all the chains to grow at the same time during the polymerization, by this means the polydispersity is kept very low, as in a stepwise type polymerization. Additionally, the homopolymers made by RAFT can be easily elongated with different monomers, forming well-defined copolymers. The polymeric material characterization was made mainly by SEC multidetection, NMR, spectroscopy of UV/VIS, and optical microscopy. The results of the characterization show the synthesis was successful in obtaining the copolymer, being selected an amphiphilic copolymer, soluble in water and responsive to pH. The dissolution of the polymer in water results in nanosized particles with potencial application as drug deliverer. Other amphiphilic copolymers were obtained and they could become useful for other applications, such as stabilization of emulsions and transdermic drug delivery, to mention few. The results also demonstrate the advantage of RAFT technique on the so called free radical polymerization, in what concerns the control of polymerization and low polydispersity of the chains.