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Updated: May 29, 2026

Preparation and Characterization of Individual and Multi-drug Loaded Physically Entrapped Polymeric Micelles
Published on: August 28, 2015
Irinotecan-Loaded Vaterite Microspheres for Drug Delivery: Drug Release and Dissolution Kinetics and Mechanism in an
Morgan P Milner1, Hugo A Saint2, Jake M Yang3
1Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QZ, Great Britain.
Abstract:
The coprecipitation synthesis of calcium carbonate vaterite microspheres loaded with chemotherapeutic drug irinotecan is reported. High drug loading comparable to the best reported for other drugs in porous vaterite is achieved, and characterization confirms that the characteristic spherical morphology of vaterite is not disrupted by the presence of irinotecan. UV-vis spectroscopy demonstrates the release of the drug over time, and the latter, upon comparison with optical microscopy dissolution data, shows that drug release correlates with the time scale of dissolution of the vaterite host. To model application in a drug delivery context, the dissolution of unloaded vaterite and irinotecan-loaded vaterite in human serum and diluted human serum is investigated, revealing inhibition of dissolution by human serum that occurs in two distinct serum concentration-dependent ranges. Furthermore, irinotecan-loaded vaterite is tested in vitro on two human pancreatic cancer cell lines, MiaPaCa-2 and Capan-1, demonstrating a therapeutic effect in both cases.
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