A free-standing, sheet-shaped, “hydrophobic” biomaterial containing polymeric micelles formed from poly(ethylene glycol)-poly(lactic acid) block copolymer for possible incorporation/release of “hydrophilic” compounds

Sheet-shaped materials with a large contact area relative to the drug targeting site lead to advantages over conventional particle-shaped drug carriers and have several advantages for their biomedical applications. The present study proposes a methodology for preparing a novel sheet-shaped “hydrophobic” and biocompatible biomaterial in which polymeric micelles are uniformly dispersed for the incorporation of “hydrophilic” compounds into the sheet. The methoxy-terminated poly(ethylene glycol)-block-poly(lactic acid) block copolymer (CH3O-PEG-b-PLA) was successfully synthesized by means of the anionic ring-opening polymerization of both ethylene oxide and dl-lactide. CH3O-PEG-b-PLA was self-assembled and formed stable micelle-like w/o emulsion with a hydrophilic inner core in organic solvents. A sheet-shaped material containing a hydrophilic inner space for incorporating hydrophilic compounds was obtained by spin-coating both the micelle solution and a sheet-forming polymer. Fluorescent images of the sheet proved that polymeric micelles providing hydrophilic spaces were uniformly dispersed in the hydrophobic sheet. The facile technique presented in this paper can be a tool for fabricating sheet-shaped biomaterials that have a hydrophilic inner core and, consequently, that are suitable for the sustained release of hydrophilic compounds.