Effect of drug loading on sustained release through needleless electrospun nanocellulose/chitosan/polylactic acid...

Conventional needle based ES is unsuitable primarily due to its needle clogging and low throughput. These issues are addressed by the more advanced needless electrospinning (NES) setup. Nanofibers are considered suitable candidates for drug delivery applications due to their high surface to volume ratio, which solves the issue of sustained drug delivery suffered by other biocomposite morphologies. However, the drug delivery systems (DDSs) either compromise on the duration of the sustained release or the biocompatibility and disintegration of the system inside the body. The current work uses NES to fabricate chitosan/polylactic acid (10:0.1 w/v%) based nanofibers and studies the effect of drug loading method in the DDS by using various ratios of nanocrystalline cellulose 0.025, 0.05, and 0.1 (w/v%) as a specialized carrier. Fabricated nanofibers were analyzed through SEM, FTIR, XRD, and TGA analysis. Increasing the NCC percentage improved the thermal properties, drug compatibility with the matrix, and sustained release. On the other hand, increased NCC caused the DDS to be more hydrophilic and easier to disintegrate. The DDS with pre-loaded drug on the nanocarrier NCC showed the best sustained release pattern in three steps and can resolve the issue of sustained drug delivery without compromising biodegradation.