Drug delivery systems are an important mechanism for increasing the therapeutic efficiency of chemotherapeutic agents by regulating the rate at which agents are released from the carrier to the target area. This minimizes unnecessary drug interaction with non-pathological sites, which often negatively affect healthy tissues. Currently available delivery systems exhibit high toxicity and low specificity; therefore it is necessary to develop a drug delivery system that is both non-toxic to the organism and capable of specifically delivering the therapeutic agent to the pathological site and releasing it a safe rate. Drug delivery systems derived from natural biomaterial polysaccharides serve as great alternatives to current drug delivery systems. These polysaccharides are readily and cheaply available as compared to current lipid-based and protein-based delivery systems. Additionally, the presence of hydrophilic groups enables them to form non-covalent bonds with biological tissues prolonging the residence time which in turn increases the absorbance of the loaded drug. Thus far, the group has been capable of developing four natural polysaccharide drug delivery systems derived from okra, fenugreek, psyllium, and tamarind. A series of in vitro culture experiments have been performed to study the safety and cytotoxicity of these materials at varying doses in different cancer cell lines, including neuroblastoma and pancreatic carcinoma. The results from these experiments indicated that the four polysaccharide delivery systems are significantly less toxic than the currently used delivery system, polyethyleneimine (PEI). In vivo experiments were performed on mouse models to study the efficiency of these delivery systems with and without the chemotherapeutic agent. Blood and urine samples were collected at various intervals to study the safety and toxicity of these delivery systems in healthy mouse models. Urinalysis and blood urea nitrogen tests were completed. The study is ongoing and is continuing to make progress. More experiments will be performed to further verify the results looking into safety and toxicity of these materials as well as the degradation process of said polymers.

In vivo studies on non-toxic polysaccharide based delivery systems for anti-cancer drugs: Biochemical analysis

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.