Abstract
There is a high demand for an optimal drug delivery system to treat androgenetic alopecia. Topical application of ISX9, which is a neurogenesis inducer, has been found to stimulate hair follicle (HF) regrowth by upregulating the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway, an essential pathway involved in initiating HF growth and development. In the present study, a temperature-sensitive, biopolymer-based, biocompatible, and eco-friendly drug-delivery system was synthesized. This system comprised chitosan-grafted poly(glycidyl methacrylate-co-N-isopropyl acrylamide) (Poly(GMA-co-NIPAAm)@CS-PGNCS) as the shell component and PF127 as the core polymer. The hydrophobic nature of the PF127 block copolymer efficiently dissolved the partially water-soluble drug, ISX9, and the thermos-responsive shell polymer effectively released the drug at a definite skin temperature. The optimized spherical nanoparticles demonstrated the lowest critical solution temperature (LCST) at 32 ± 2 °C with a diameter of 100-250 nm, which delivered encapsulated ISX9 with greater precision than topical ISX9. In a series of in vivo experiments, we demonstrated that ISX9-coated TBNPs upregulated the expression of β-catenin, active β-catenin, Wnt target genes, stemness marker genes, proliferating cell nuclear antigen, HF stem cell markers, and HF markers including VEGF, TGF, and IGF-1 more effectively than topical ISX9. These results suggest that TBNPs could be employed as a platform for effective transdermal delivery of various hydrophobic drugs.