Investigation of drug loading/release and cell interaction properties of modified carbon quantim dot-containing polymers

Globalization, along with swift technological developments has caused significant advances within the pharmaceutical field. However, when it comes to medical drugs, even today, adverse side effects still remain one of the first things that come to mind. This, in particular brings up the importance of delivering drugs to a target site, thus minimizing their adverse effects. Furthermore, it is especially important to be able to monitor its release. Biocompatible polymers have garnered much interest in recent times as good candidates for targeted drug delivery systems. In addition to this, over the past few decades, quantum dots have revealed their potential to be used as bioimaging agents. With these in mind, within the scope of this doctoral thesis, carbon quantum dots were synthesized from poppy seeds. In order to see whether the oils present in seeds have any effect, poppyseeds that were (i) unmodified, (ii) ground, and (iii) ground and had their oils extracted via Soxhlet apparatus were used as carbon sources. These were then separately integrated into ternary polymer blends made of starch, locust bean gum and chitosan. These blends were crosslinked with citric acid and dried to synthesize composite polymeric films. These were subsequently characterized and their swelling as well as drug loading and release capacities were investigated with diclofenac diethylamine as the model drug. Finally, cell growth studies were conducted on the synthesized films and their cell viabilities were investigated using neutral red uptake assay. Results have shown that films with higher concentrations of locust bean gum and chitosan exhibited significantly higher drug loading and release capacities. Furthermore, the inclusion of carbon quantum dots has shown to slow down the drug release while also increasing cell viability.