Preparation of Highly Porous Poly(d,l-lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) Microspheres

Poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) microspheres have been a useful tool as a controlled drug delivery system for peptides and proteins. Recently, porous microspheres have gained great attention as inhalation drug delivery system due to their low aerodynamic densities. Here, we report highly porous PLGA microspheres, which were prepared by using a single o/w emulsification/solvent evaporation method. Two types of porogen, i.e., (i) extractable Pluronic F127 and (ii) gas foaming salt of ammonium bicarbonate, were used to induce pores on the surface of PLGA microspheres. The respective preparation conditions on dp/cp ratio and porogen concentration were determined by the previous preliminary experiments, and other preparation factors were further optimized on the basis of PLGA Mw and porogen type. The morphological features examined by scanning electron microscope (SEM) show these porous microspheres have highly porous surface structure with a diameter range of 2030 m. These highly porous PLGA microspheres, which have much lower density, would be a practical aerosol system for pulmonary drug delivery.