Use of Gold Nanoparticles to Investigate the Drug Embedding and Releasing Performance in Biodegradable Poly(glycerol sebacate)

Poly(glycerol sebacate) (PGS) is a soft elastomer with excellent biocompatibility, and it has great potential in the application of soft tissue engineering and drug delivery. However, there is still limited knowledge about the drug embedding capabilities of PGS and the drug releasing performance, as PGS naturally degrades in vivo. In this work, PGS containing various amounts of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) is prepared to simulate the embedment of nanomedicine in PGS and to reveal the changes of AuNPs concentration and distribution in PGS before and after enzymatic degradation. The results show that AuNPs up to 15.9 μg are released from degraded PGS films after 28 d of enzyme degradation, along with mass loss up to 40.6% and swelling of ∼5%. It is also found that there is an inversely proportional relationship between the AuNPs embedding concentration and the AuNPs release rate. The results obtained by laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry reveal that not only is PGS degraded via surface erosion but lateral diffusion of AuNPs presents a diffusion coefficient of 1.126 × 10–14 cm2 s–1 during the enzymatic degradation. With the quantitative characterization of AuNPs release rate from PGS composite materials, it is possible to apply PGS in embedding drug molecules for long-term drug delivery.