Aims: Recent publications have suggested that cylindrically shaped drug-delivery carriers have an advantage over carriers based on spherical particles in both blood circulation and cell internalization rates. For this reason, this article introduces a method to fabricate hollow, uniform, biodegradable chitosan nano test tubes for applications in drug delivery.
Methods: A nanoporous alumina template membrane was used to fabricate hollow chitosan nano test tubes. The chitosan nano test tubes were crosslinked with a disulfide cleavable crosslinker before being removed from the alumina template membrane. We explored two mechanisms for degrading the chitosan nano test tubes--enzymatic degradation by lysozyme and cleavage of the disulfide bond in the crosslinking agent.
Results: The template synthesis method resulted in the fabrication of uniform hollow chitosan nano test tubes whose dimensions were easily manipulated based on the dimensions of the pores in the alumina template membrane. The tubes were degraded upon exposure to either lysozyme or sulfhydryl-containing reducing reagents.
Conclusion: These tubes have potential for drug-delivery applications. The fact that these tubes degrade upon exposure to a sulfhydryl-containing reducing agent allows for a mechanism for intercellular drug delivery as the tubes should degrade in the presence of intercellular glutathione.