Scientific Poster Session IV: Students Research-in-Progress

Abstract

Despite its clinical efficacy, Bupivacaine is known as the most cardiotoxic local anesthesia and only has a very minimal recommended dosage as dose-related toxicity could easily be fatal and result in cardiac arrest and death.

Research Question or Hypothesis:

One postulated therapeutic action for this drug overdose is the sequestration of bupivacaine through molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs), which are stable synthetic polymers with predetermined selectivity to a given analyte through a template provided.

Study Design:

In this study, MIPs were synthesized using chitosan and k-carrageenan with glutaraldehyde as the crosslinker and bupivacaine as the template drug.

Methods:

On the synthesis, NIPs with solvent concentration 50:50 v/v 1% HOAc:DI (mL) were reported to have been crosslinked better than those with solvent concentration 50:100 v/v 1% HOAc:DI (mL). Moreover, 1:2 chitosan-carrageenan mixture has been reported to produce more stable NIPs compared to a 1:1 chitosan-carrageenan mixture. Fifteen (15) cycles of washing with deionized water were needed to neutralize the NIPs while 15 cycles of washing with isopropanol were needed to significantly remove the bound drug to the MIPs.

Results:

Upon the addition of carrageenan to chitosan, the decomposition of the MIP was observed in thermogravimetric analysis at a lower temperature (at 224.74^oC); while a decrease in transition temperature was observed in differential thermal analysis. Meanwhile, sequestration experiments show higher initial drug concentration resulted in higher binding capacity for both MIPs and NIPs. Additionally, there's hardly any increase in the binding capacity of the MIP & NIPs with increasing time, which may be attributed to the excessive swelling of the polymers. The binding capacity of MIP & NIPs to bupivacaine decreased in the presence of Amitriptyline.

Conclusion:

Overall, the binding efficiency results show that MIPs are only slightly more efficient than NIP in sequestering the drug. in terms of the function of time, initial drug concentration, and in presence of amitriptyline hydrochloride.

Presenting Author

Authors