Synthesis of a novel cellulose nanowhisker-based drug delivery system

Recently, cellulose nanowhiskers have attracted attention as a promising material in the biomedical field because of their outstanding properties such as hydrophilicity, biocompatibility, biodegradability, and high surface area. In this work, we prepared a novel nanometric carrier molecule for amine-containing biologically active molecules and drugs employing functionalized cellulose nanowhiskers. The nanowhiskers were grafted with a spacer molecule, gamma aminobutyric acid, using a periodate oxidation and Schiff's base condensation reaction sequence. To achieve controlled and rapid delivery of the targeting moiety, syringyl alcohol, a releasable linker, was then attached to it. All the reactions were carried out in aqueous media and the resulting products were characterized by FT-IR, NMR, XPS, and TEM experiments to evaluate the functional groups, structure, and morphology respectively.