Thyroid cancer occurrence frequency has been on the rise in recent years. Throughout the past decade diagnoses have been increasing at a rate of approximately 5% per year with the number of related deaths increasing at 0.9 % per year. Typically, this form of cancer yields optimistic prognoses with 20 year survival rates of 90 %. However, there are instances in which the cancer in particularly aggressive resulting an 10 year survival of as low as 15%. The conventional approach for treatment is surgical removal of the tumor. Lenvatinib, 4-[3-Chloro-4-(cyclopropylcarbamoylamino)phenoxy]-7-methoxy-quinoline-6-carboxamide, offers a chemotherapeutic treatment for thyroid cancer. Lenvatinib acts as an inhibitor to tyrosine kinase, which is crucial to proper metabolism functionality. Though it does provide an alternate mode of treatment, it is in no way limited to only damaging cancer tissue. This damage to healthy tissue coupled with the plethora of other adverse effects ranging from nausea to hyper tension, yields hefty consequence to treatment. Through the use of gold nanoparticles, a targeted drug delivery system has been developed. The drug has been immobilized via amide bond formation to the gold through a linker molecule. Targeting ligands, folic acid and transferrin, have been attached to gold nanocarriers as well. The amide bond is stable under normal physiological conditions of pH 7.4 but breaks, releasing the drug, under the low pH conditions of cancer tissue, which is typically around pH 5.5. The multifunctionalized nanoparticles recognize the cancer tissue by attaching to overexpressed transferrin and folate receptors, which can then mediate endocytosis of the loaded nanoparticle.

Controlled release of lenvatinib from multi-functional nanoparticles monitored by surface-enhanced Raman scattering

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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