Preparation and structural characterization of O-acetyl agarose with low degree of substitution

• Autor(a) principal: Garcia,Rosangela B.
• Data de Publicação: 2000
• Outros Autores: Vidal,Rosangela R. L., Rinaudo,Marguerite
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Polímeros (São Carlos. Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-14282000000300012
• topic: Agarose; o-acetyl agarose; acetylation

Among the biodegradable polymers, the polysaccharides have been found to be promising carriers for bioactive molecules. From a general standpoint, they present several reactive groups, such as hydroxyl, carboxyl and amine, that can be modified in a number of ways, giving rise to suitable devices for controlled release. In this paper, agarose was submitted to O-acetylation reactions under heterogeneous conditions, using acetic anhydride and pyridine, aiming to observe the effect of acetyl groups on the agarose properties. The products were characterized by Infrared and ¹H NMR spectroscopies. In the range of average acetylation degrees (DA) 0.07-0.48, the polymers presented partial solubility in boiling water and in common organic solvents. The ¹H NMR spectra presented evidences of non-homogeneous acetyl group distribution along the chains, as concluded from the solubility of only one of the fractions with DA<0.09, in boiling water .