Preparation and characterization of caffeic acid grafted PLGA microspheres

Introduction Phenolic compounds are known to have antioxidant properties mainly because they can act as free-radical scavengers since the hydroxyl groups can donate an electron or hydrogen atom to a free radical. Recently, phenolic compounds grafted onto the backbone of poly(lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) were proposed as novel biodegradable materials stable to sterilization by gamma- irradiation at the dose of 25 kGy [1]. Nevertheless, no information on the feasibility to encapsulate biological drug products have been available.