Design and development of temperature sensitive porous poly(NIPAAm‐AMPS) hydrogels for drug release of doxorubicin‐a cancer chemotherapy drug

Temperature sensitive polymer network porous hydrogels were developed with N‐Isopropylacrylamide (NIPAAm) and AMPS (2‐acrylamido‐2‐methyl‐1‐propanesulfonicacid), as well as with sucrose as porogen by crosslinking with hydrophilic crosslinker N,N¹‐methylenebisacrylamide (MBA). The temperature responsive behaviour, the swelling/deswelling kinetics of the hydrogels were investigated. The structural and morphological characterizations of the developed hydrogels were obtained from FTIR spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The increment in the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of NIPAAm hydrogels can be done with the help of AMPS and it is confirmed with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) as well as temperature dependent swelling curves. The model cancer chemotherapy drug Doxorubicin (Dox) was loaded into theses hydrogels and the release studies as well as the released profiles of the drug showed that more than 8–54% of the loaded drug was released in the first half‐an‐hour at a buffer solution of 7.4 and the rest of the drug was released slowly. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2010