Development and release characterization of hyaluronan-doxycycline gels based on metal coordination

A simple mixing with hyaluronan (HA), doxycycline (DC) and divalent metal cation in an aqueous solution enabled a thermoreversible water-soluble gel to form. For the cross-linking, two kinds of interactions were supposed. One was an electrostatic interaction between a positively charged group in DC and a negatively charged carboxyl function of HA, and the other was a chelation at the phenolic diketone moiety in DC. Since the gel was formed physically, the critical polymer concentration for gelation was present, and it was about 0.05% for HA with a molecular weight of 1.6x10(6). The hydrogel would be formed holding water in the HA entanglement network when DCs on HA chains made coordinate bonds through metal chelation. By changing the mixing ratio, two types of gels with different characteristics in drug release could be prepared. One was a gel with zero-order release prepared by mixing the same amount of HA and DC in equivalent. The other was a gel indicating Fickian diffusion-type release by mixing more DC than HA. Further, by controlling the absolute concentration of HA and DC, or the molecular weight of HA, some gels with desired release profiles could be prepared.