The aim of this work is to develop drug carrier system with high loading capacity and controlled drug release profile for antibiotic release. For this purpose, composite molecularly imprinted nanofibers were prepared via in-situ graft polymerization of methacrylic acid as a monomer, N,N'-methylene bisacrylamide as a crosslinker and gentamicin sulfate as a template molecule onto surface-modified bacterial cellulose nanofibers. Gentamicin imprinted microparticles were fabricated onto bacterial cellulose nanofibers resulting in the formation of composite BC nanofibers. Thus, the composite nanofibers incorporated with gentamicin imprinted microparticles were achieved to fabricated. The in-vitro drug release tests were performed to evaluate the release performance of the resultant composite nanofibers at 37 °C. Also, kinetic models were applied to the drug release data. It was determined that the drug release from the composite molecularly imprinted nanofibers fit well in the Korsmeyer-Peppas model.
Keywords: Molecularly imprinted polymers; antibiotic; bacterial cellulose; composite structure; nanofibers; release.