Development and fabrication of imiquimod nanofiber mesh for melanoma treatment

Drug delivery system (DDS) is the process of administering a drug-loaded composite to achieve a therapeutic effect in vitro or in vivo. In this paper, we present the fabrication of imiquimod-poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) fibre meshes for the melanoma therapy application. The fabrication was based on the electrospinning technique and NIH-3T3 fibroblast cells were cultured on electrospun fibre meshes to study the biocompatibility. The parameters used, such as flow rates, the concentrations of polymer solution, were studied to give a better understanding of the diameters and morphology of electrospun fibres. The relationships between fiber diameters and imiquimod release profiles were characterized by using the UV-Vis. Four imiquimod-PCL fibre meshes, which have between 100 and 300 nm in diameters, were fabricated by using optimized fabrication parameters for studying the cell viability of melanoma. By comparing with the pure PCL fibre mesh, the imiquimod-PCL fibre meshes preforms over 20 percent of cell viability decrease and around 10% of cell number dropped in 48 hours. The cell viability was affected by released imiquimod. Hence we believe that imiquimod-PCL fibre meshes are a promising and possible treatment for the application of melanoma therapy.