A Microporous Chitosan/Collagen Composite Encapsulated Small Tube of Nanoporous Anodic Aluminum Oxide for Long-Acting Drug Release

This study aims to develop a long-acting and implantable drug release device that can well control the release rate and concentration of the loaded drug. The proposed long-acting and implantable drug release device consists of a tubular nanoporous anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) and the microporous chitosan/collagen composite encapsulated inside it. The nanopore size of the AAO tube can be arranged by the anodization parameters to adjust the release rate and concentration, while the microporous chitosan/collagen composite can provide the device with a long-acting release property. Fabrication results indicated that the AAO tube has a uniform pore arrangement with pore size around 50 nm. And the synthesized microporous chitosan/collagen composites composites containing 90% of chitosan had the highest moisture content; therefore were used as the drug carriers. Release experiments demonstrate that the proposed long-acting drug release device had released only less than 60% of the loading drug at the 16^th release day.