One-Pot Synthesis of Highly Monodisperse Poly(lactic-co-glycolic Acid) Particles with Controlled Porosity as Efficient Drug Delivery Vehicles

Poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) particles are one of the most widely used biocompatible and biodegradable materials, and have been extensively investigated as drug delivery vehicles. While a number of different types of additives have been used during and after the synthesis of the PLGA particles for the enhancement of their functions, the shape control of the particles and observations of their shape-dependent properties have been rarely reported to date. To overcome the limitations of conventional PLGA particles, including the slow degradation of PLGA and the resultant slow drug release, we synthesized porous PLGA particles with much higher surface area than in previous works. Unlike in previous studies, the porous PLGA particles in this work exhibit distinctive advantages such as a simpler synthetic scheme, improved size monodispersity, and controllable pore size distribution (approximately 1 μm in diameter). Polyethylenimine (PEI) was chosen as a pore-generating material, which simplified the synthesis process significantly. The performance of the porous PLGA particles was evaluated using doxorubicin (DOX) and the A549 cell line as a drug and target cells of a model system, respectively. Based on the observation of the cell viability, the DOX-loaded porous PLGA particles were determined to be five times more efficient than molecular DOX.