Poloxamer 407 pol

Gallic acid (GA), ferulic acid (FA), cholesterol (CH), Tween 20 (T), Span 20 (S) the copolymers poly(ethylene glycol)-block-poly(propylene glycol)-block-poly(ethylene glycol) poloxamer 188 (P) and poloxamer 407 (pol) were from Sigma-Aldrich (St Louis, MO, USA). All other materials and solvents were from Merck Serono S.p.A. (Rome, Italy).

X-ray-imageable Poloxamer 407 (POL) (Sigma Aldrich, St. Louis, MO, USA) formulations were prepared according to the cold method previously described by Huang et a/.^{27 (link)}, with modifications to generate five concentrations of POL, 17, 18, 20, 21, and 22% (w/v) (POL17, POL18, POL20, POL21, and POL22, respectively), in normal saline (Quality Biological, Gaithersburg, MD, USA) with iodixanol (Visipaque 320 mg I/mL, GE Healthcare (Boston, MA, USA) added to a final concentration of 40 mg I/mL. Briefly, the respective amounts of poloxamer, iodixanol, and normal saline were added to a total volume of 50 mL. The solution was maintained at 4°C under magnetic stirring for at least 12 h. A similar procedure generated nonimageable POL formulations at the same poloxamer concentrations without iodixanol.