One-pot preparation of polylactic acid-ibuprofen conjugates and their performance characterization

A series of polylactic acid-ibuprofen (PLA-IBU) conjugates was directly synthesized via melt polycondensation of lactic acid (LA) with ibuprofen (IBU) in the presence of 0.3 wt% SnO at 160 °C for 6 h. The structures of the PLA-IBU conjugates were confirmed by FTIR and 1H NMR. According to the GPC and DSC results, the molecular weight and Tg of the PLA-IBUs with different feed ratios increase as the feed amount of LA increases. The drug content of these IBU-conjugated biodegradable polymers can also be simply controlled by adjusting the monomer feed ratio to reach the expected levels. The preliminary biological tests show that the PLA-IBU conjugates have the anticipated pharmaceutical activity, which is beneficial for these PLA-based IBU prodrugs prepared by this convenient one-pot method to be efficiently used in the biochemical and pharmaceutical industry.