Antibiotic release controlled by sugarcane bagasse-based hydrogels as responsive carriers

Abstract This work focuses on the transesterification of sugarcane bagasse cellulose (SBC) using tert-butyl acetoacetate (t-BAA) to obtain bagasse cellulose acetoacetate (BCAA), and the preparation of redox/pH dual-responsive hydrogels with cystamine dihydrochlorate (CYS). BCAA and cellulose hydrogels were comprehensively characterized with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), solubility and water retention. The results showed that BCAA was soluble in DMSO, and the degree of substitution (DS) ranged between 0.77 and 1.70, and the hydrogel had a certain water-retaining property. In addition, tetracycline hydrochloride (TH) was used as the model drug loaded in the hydrogel; and TH release can be manipulated or accelerated under reductive or weakly acidic conditions. According to the drug release kinetics analysis, suggested that the release mechanism of drug-loaded hydrogel was mainly driven by Fickian diffusion. The drug-loaded hydrogel also exhibited high antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and Escherichia coli (E. coli). Therefore, the dual-responsive and drug-loaded hydrogels have great potential in the applications associated with biomedicine.