Study on the degradation rate of polyanhydride (poly(sebacic acid), diacetoxy terminated, PSADT) for potential drug delivery and tissue engineering scaffold applications

In this study, the degradation rate of polyanhydride (poly(sebacic acid), diacetoxy terminated, PSADT) was investigated. Circular PSADT tablets were formed using a compression molding device under three different processing temperatures, and then immersed into phosphate buffer saline (PBS) for degradation experiments. The mechanisms of degradation and the degradation rate were characterized by the change in molecular weight, reduction in specimen mass, and decrease of specimen thickness. The surface morphology at different degradation times was observed by scanning electron microscope (SEM). The results showed that PSADT exhibited the behavior of surface erosion due to the fact that near zero-order degradation kinetics was observed in its degradation process. In addition, it has been found that processing temperature had no significant effect on the PSADT degradation rate.