Cyanoacrylate adhesive provides efficient local drug delivery.

Biodegradable drug delivery systems have advanced treatment of a wide spectrum of musculoskeletal problems. However, their lack of availability and cost can restrict use. To find an easily available and inexpensive biodegradable implant, we tested a widely used tissue adhesive, n-butyl-2-cyanoacrylate, as a drug-trapping material. We tested vancomycin with commercially available absorbable gelatin-sponge pieces as the scaffold. We evaluated the in vitro and in vivo drug release profiles and in vivo inflammatory response. A mouse muscle pouch model was used for in vivo evaluations. The released vancomycin level was measured by fluorescence polarization immunoassay technique, and a leukocyte count-based grading system was used to evaluate inflammatory response. Our findings suggest the proposed implant provides effective drug release for as much as 42 days in vitro and 14 days in vivo. The presence of n-butyl-2-cyanoacrylate led to a local inflammatory response which decreased after 3 weeks in the group with less adhesive. These results showed that n-butyl-2-cyanoacrylate could efficiently trap and slowly release a drug when used in the structure of a biodegradable local drug delivery device.