| Although Tuberculosis (TB) is often regarded as a disease of the past, it is still one of the leading killers of adults and children worldwide. TB is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a bacterium that mostly infects the lungs but can also infect the spleen, brain, kidneys, and other organs throughout the body. While effective drug therapy is available for the treatment of TB, harsh side-effects and high drug loading result in many patients discontinuing treatment. One goal for TB treatment is to create a biocompatible, biodegradable drug delivery system that employs the use of multiple drugs while simultaneously relieving the patient from the burden of self-medicating. Polymeric nanomaterials possess unique characteristics in that they have tunable properties, are biocompatible, can degrade at a specific time period and can take on various shapes and sizes. For this study, we optimized a procedure for making poly(lactic acid-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) nanospheres and loading Rifampicin, one of the most potent and least bioavailable drugs in the TB drug regiment, inside of them. Various solvents and stabilizers were analyzed for optimal drug loading efficiency and size of the polymer nanospheres. These characteristics were quantitatively evaluated using scanning electron microscopy in conjunction with image analysis software and UV-vis spectroscopy. Additionally, the thermal characteristics of Rifampicin, bulk PLGA, PLGA nanospheres, and Rifampicin-loaded PLGA nanospheres were investigated using thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) to ensure that the processing did not interfere with the chemical properties of the drug therefore affecting the treatment potential of Rifampicin. Although the aims of this study only cover one drug of a multi-drug regiment, the knowledge and techniques acquired may be translated to the rest of the medication in hopes of creating a truly effective treatment for TB that reduces the burden of treatment from the user and ultimately eliminates the problem of multi-drug resistant TB.;Keywords: Tuberculosis, Rifampicin, Nanosphere, PLGA, polymer, drug delivery. |
