Abstract: Injectable hydrogel-based drug delivery systems have attracted more and more attention due to their sustainedrelease performance, biocompatibility, and 3D network. The present study showed whole pectin-based hydrogel as an injectable drug delivery system, which was developed from oxidized pectin (OP) and diacylhydrazine adipate-functionalized pectin (Pec-ADH) via acylhydrazone linkage. The as-prepared hydrogels were characterized by H NMR, F'T-IR, and SEM techniques. The equilibrium swelling ratio of obtained hydrogel (i.e., samplegel 5) was up to 4306.65 % in the distilled water, which was higher than that in PBs with different pH valuesIncreasing the pH of the swelling media, the swelling ratio of all hydrogels decreased significantly. The resultsthat involved the swelling properties indicated the salt- and pH-responsiveness of the as-prepared hydrogels. Thedrug release study presented that 5-FU can be persistently released for more than 12 h without sudden release.Moreover, the whole pectin-based hydrogel presented high cytocompatibility toward L929 cell lines, and thedrug delivery system showed a high inhibitory effect on MCF-7 cell lines. All these results manifested that theacylhydrazone-derived whole pectin-based hydrogel was an excellent candidate for injectable drug deliversystems.

Keywords: Injectable hydrogel, Pectin, Acylhydrazone linkage, Self-healing, Drug delivery system

Acylhydrazone-derived whole pectin-based hydrogel as an injectable drug delivery system.pdf