Injectable thermosensitive hydrogels as drug delivery systems.

Paper presented to the 9th Annual Symposium on Graduate Research and Scholarly Projects (GRASP) held at the Marcus Welcome Center, Wichita State University, May 8, 2013.Research completed at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of EngineeringRecently, injectable thermosensitive hydrogels have been attracted much attention for the biomedical applications, such as drug delivery and tissue engineering. Injectable hydrogels offer a number of advantages, including high biocompatibility, simple drug loading, protecting drug from the environment, prolonged and localized drug delivery and ease of applications, which make them as potential future drug delivery systems. Among them, injectable thermosensitive hydrogels with lower sol-gel transition temperature, around the physiological temperature, have been extensively investigated. The main objective of this study is to focus on the fabrication and characterization of thermosensitive injectable hydrogels as drug delivery systems. The hydrogels are primarily made of chitosan, drug and solvents with over 90% water content.The Graduate School, Academic Affairs, and University Librarie