PRINT Nanoparticles: Applications in Oncology (2013)

Undergraduates: Tiffany King, Kevin Reuter, Marc Kai Jillian Perry

Faculty Advisor: Joseph DeSimone
Department: Chemistry

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In recent years, nanomedicine has been geared towards chemotherapeutic delivery for cancer treatment. ¿Chemotherapeutics are usually toxic, insoluble, and are cleared rapidly when administered into the body. ¿Nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems have the potential to protect the chemotherapeutic payload while passively accumulating in the tumor bed and actively targeting cancer cells, all while avoiding recognition by the immune system. These properties have shown to enhance efficacy of some traditional chemotherapies. ¿Utilizing a nanoparticle fabrication technique known as Particle Replication in Non-Wetting Templates (PRINT), we have attempted to address each of these characteristics to gain further insight to what the ideal nanoparticle (NP) is for drug delivery. In vivo studies showed tumor accumulation, via the enhanced permeability effect (EPR), was minimal in A549 (lung cancer) tumor model. These results may suggest the variability of the EPR effect as a function of particle size, tumor size and/or tumor type. Furthermore, in vitro studies indicate that loading a targeting ligand onto the NP surface can increase internalization in MDA-MB-468 (breast cancer) cells. In conclusion, these experiments have given more insight into the complexity and variability of effectively accumulating and targeting NP in tumor site.