Polymeric nanocapsules for pharmaceutical applications

Polymeric nanoparticles can be used for drug release in cancer therapy. Nanoparticles can be divided into nanospheres and nanocapsules, accordingly to their structure. Nanospheres are constituted by just the polymer, while nanocapsules have an inner liquid core surrounded by a polymer layer. Drug can be incapsulated inside these structures. Amphiphilic copolymer can be used for this purpose because they allow to have an organic inner core and an hydrophilic external shell. A novel copolymer from cyanoacrylates family have been synthesized, with an hydrophilic monomer and an idrophobic monomer in a ratio 1:4. This copolymer has been characterized in terms of its thermal behavior and crystalline characteristics and of its water degradability. Confined impinging jets mixers have been used to produce nanocapsules and results are compared with the ones obtained with nanospheres. CIJMs allows to obtained nanocapsules with controlled size thank to the high mixing efficiency inside the mixing chamber. Drug release tests have been performed and show that the release from nanocapsules is slower than from nanspheres. Moreover, drug release in the first hours of release depends on a diffusive mechanism since the polymer has not been destroyed yet.