A hydrotropic β-cyclodextrin grafted hyperbranched polyglycerol co-polymer for hydrophobic drug delivery.

The development of successful formulations for poorly water soluble drugs remains a longstanding, critical, and challenging issue in cancer therapy. A β-cyclodextrin (CD) functionalized hyperbranched polyglycerol (HPG) has been prepared as a potential water insoluble drug carrier. The HPG-g-CD molecules could self-assemble into multimolecular spherical micelles in water, the size of which ranged from 200 to 300 nm, with good dispersity. A high loading capacity and high encapsulation efficiency of paclitaxel, as a model, were obtained. The release profiles of different co-polymer compositions showed a burst release followed by continuous extended release. Furthermore, MTT analysis showed that HPG-g-CD had good biocompatibility, indicating that HPG-g-CD may be considered a promising hydrophobic drug delivery system.