Spesifically, for encapsulation protocol of hydrophobic drugs into PAMAM dendrimers, I need to optimize the required/adequate time to remove the non-encapsulated drug by dialysis against DI water. I'm trying to understand how to set the time before the system starts to release the encapsulated drug.
I'd be very happy if you could help.
I don't have an answer, but here are some things to consider.
Is this hydrophobic drug appreciably soluble in water? If not, it probably won't be removed by dialysis in any reasonable amount of time.
Dialysis is a slow process, taking several hours to reach equilibrium across the membrane for a freely diffusible solute. If this time scale is comparable to the rate of release from the dendrimer, then dialysis would not be a good method.
Can you use a faster method of separating unincorporated small molecule from high molecular weight dendrimer? I'm thinking of gel filtration (gel permeation) chromatography, which can be fairly rapid since the high molecular weight component elutes first.
Like Dr. Adam suggested, the gel permeation technique seems to be the best choice. It will be time-manageable, faster (than others like forced dialyser etc.), accurate, and fully recoverable (of the material constituents) option. Depending on your column parameters (especially length), and the gel filtration material (may be LH-50, depending upon higher MW components), the method is highly recommended for you to give a serious try!
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