Despite advances in the bio-tissue engineering area, the technical basis to directly load hydrophobic drugs on chitosan (CTS) electrospun nanofibers (ENs) has not yet been fully established. In this study, we fabricated CTS ENs by using an electrospinning (ELSP) system, followed by surface modification using succinyl-beta-cyclodextrin (β-CD) under mild conditions. The β-CD-modified CTS (βCTS) ENs had slightly increased hydrophobicity compared to pristine CTS ENs as well as decreased residual amine content on the surface. Through FTIR spectroscopy and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), we characterized the surface treatment physiochemically. In the drug release test, we demonstrated the stable and sustained release of a hydrophobic drug (e.g., dexamethasone) loaded on β-CD ENs. During in vitro biocompatibility assessments, the grafting of β-CD was shown to not reduce cell viability compared to pristine CTS ENs. Additionally, cells proliferated well on β-CD ENs, and this was confirmed by F-actin fluorescence staining. Overall, the material and strategies developed in this study have the potential to load a wide array of hydrophobic drugs. This could be applied as a drug carrier for a broad range of tissue engineering applications.
© 2021 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.