Hybrid microgels produced via droplet microfluidics for sustainable delivery of hydrophobic and hydrophilic model nanocarriers

Drug delivery for treatment of chronic diseases relies on the effective delivery of payload materials into the target cells in a long-term release. In this context, the present study investigated hybrid microgels as platforms to carry nanoparticles to drug delivery. Hybrid microgels were produced with silk fibroin (SF) and chondroitin sulfate (CS), and alginate (ALG) by droplet microfluidics. ALG/SF, ALG/CS, and ALG/CS/SF microgels, ranging from 70-90 μm, were tested to encapsulate two model nanoparticles, polystyrene latex beads in pristine form (NPs) and NPs coated with bovine serum albumin (NPs-BSA) to simulate hydrophobic and hydrophilic nanocarriers, respectively. IR spectroscopy and fluorescence microscopy analysis confirmed the presence of SF and CS within ALG-based microgels revealing marked differences in their morphology and physicochemical properties. The release profiles of model nanoparticles revealed to be dependent on microgels composition and physicochemical properties. These findings show that SF ternary hybrid microgels facilitated the entrapment of hydrophobic nanocarriers with encapsulation efficiency (EE) from 83 to 98% keeping a better sustainable profile release than nonhybrid ALG microgels. Besides, CS improved the carriage of NPs-BSA (EE = 85%) and their profile release. The results highlight the versatility and tunable properties of these biobased microgels, being a good strategy to be used as an efficient platform in using macro and nanoencapsulated systems for drug delivery.