Budesonide (BUD) is a hydrophobic compound utilized to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Francesco Trotta group at Turin University has tried a method to load BUD into the non-toxic and biocompatible βcyclodextrin-based nanosponges (βCD-NS), which resulted in an encapsulation efficiency of 81 ± 5.0 % for the optimized synthesis process.

The morphology of BUD, blank NS, and BUD-loaded NS was studied using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The imaging is conducted using secondary electrons and 10 kV accelerating voltage, with the samples on the aluminum stub. Before SEM analysis, the polymers were coated by Vac Coat Desktop Sputter Coater model DSR1 with 12 nm of gold thin film.

This study demonstrated a longer duration of drug release and absorption from the lungs up to 12 h from BUD-βCD-NS structures, where the initial interval was 2 h for pure BUD.?The results of this research suggest the BUD-loaded βCD-NS to be formulated as a dry powder inhaler and offer new insights into the future advancement of βCD-NS as a drug delivery system to achieve controlled release of therapeutic agents via the pulmonary route.