A medicated shape memory composite of grafting tannin/poly(l-lactide)

Establishing drug release from shape memory polymers (SMPs) for biomedical applications will broaden the horizon of SMP applications from commercial medical device to scientific drug delivery system. Therefore, a strategy combining degradable SMP with drug release is put forward. However, there are few reports about the relevance between them so far. In the work, incorporations of three grafting tannins (TA) as switching phase into poly (l-lactide)(PLLA) construct different thermoresponsive SM composites. TA-PCL-COOH/PLLA exhibites good shape fixation (R_f) and recovery rate (R_r) at 55 °C, and its recovery time is 75 s. After loading lipophilic drug, SM capability of medicated TA-PCL-COOH/PLLA enhances, the R_f and R_r are 97.8% and 97.2%, in particular, its recovery time decreases to 32 s. The effect of SM on drug release is explored. After the first round of SM, the drug release accelerates obviously at body temperature; for example, the release amount of drug increases from 46.5% to 66.1% at initial 12 h due to change of microstructure and improvement of wettability. The drug release rate climbs only slightly as the SM round increases.