Self-healable hydrogel on tumor cell as drug delivery system for localized and effective therapy

A self-healable chitosan(CS)/polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) hydrogel as an injectable drug carrier was first prepared in situ on tumor cells for effective and localized therapy. PVA molecules have a synergistic effect on the formation and maintenance of 3D network conformation of hydrogel. The hydrogel shows good biocompatibility and could be easily and rapidly formed. When loaded with fluorouracil (5-FU), the hydrogel possessed good drug retention ability at pH 7.4, which can prevent the loss of drug to normal cells and reduce the side effect. As well, the hydrogel shows continuous and controllable drug release, with the final cumulative releasing amount of 84.8% at pH 5.0. Therefore, the hydrogel not only could maintain a higher 5-FU concentration around tumor cells to enhance the antitumor effect, but also can achieve pH sensitive controllable drug release at the lesion site. Meantime, the attractive self-healing ability of the CS/PVA hydrogel is first revealed in this study, which contributes to the regeneration of its integral network from the broken fragments. The CS/PVA hydrogel may hold promise for better applications in anti-tumor therapy.