Protein encapsulation and release from PEO-b-polyphosphoester templated calcium carbonate particles.

Calcium carbonate particles are promising candidates as proteins carriers for their controlled delivery in the body. The present paper aims at investigating the protein encapsulation by in situ precipitation of calcium carbonate particles prepared by a process based on supercritical CO and using a new type of degradable well-defined double hydrophilic block copolymers composed of poly(ethylene oxide) and polyphosphoester blocks acting as templating agent for the calcium carbonate. For this study, lysozyme was chosen as a model for therapeutic protein for its availability and ease of detection.

Double hydrophilic polyphosphoester containing copolymers as efficient templating agents for calcium carbonate microparticles.

The use of calcium carbonate (CaCO) microparticles is becoming more and more attractive in many fields especially in biomedical applications in which the fine tuning of the size, morphology and crystalline form of the CaCO particles is crucial. Although some structuring compounds, like hyaluronic acid, give satisfying results, the control of the particle structure still has to be improved. To this end, we evaluated the CaCO structuring capacity of novel well-defined double hydrophilic block copolymers composed of poly(ethylene oxide) and a polyphosphoester segment with an affinity for calcium like poly(phosphotriester)s bearing pendent carboxylic acids or poly(phosphodiester)s with a negatively charged oxygen atom on each repeating monomer unit.