Polymeric nanoparticles (NPs) have attracted interest during the last decades, partly facilitated by the rapid developments in the area of controlled radical polymerization, now allowing for a broad range of monomers to be polymerized with control to result in well-defined nanoparticles. NPs, displaying a core-shell morphology, have shown great potential as therapeutic delivery systems, due to their ability to enhance bioavailability, circulation time, and selective localization of small molecular therapeutics. Two different NP scaffolds designed for drug-delivery will be described; unimolecular micelles and latex NPs. Unimolecular micelles based on amphiphilic high molecular weight hyperbranched dendritic-linear polymers (HBDLP)s were obtained by self-condensing vinyl (co)polymerization, and subsequent chain-extension with P(OEGMA) by ATRP to afford NPs with diameters &lt;50 nm, Fig. 1. A monomer containing a cleavable disulfide bond was designed and copolymerized into the hydrophobic domain, allowing for subsequent triggered release. SEC-MALLS showed that the formed NPs had high absolute molecular weights (&lt;600 kg mol-1), and that increasing molecular weight resulted in larger NPs. The neat NPs proved to be non-toxic to breast cancer cell lines. The second platform is based on non-toxic amphiphilic latex NPs obtained by polymerization-induced self-assembly of amphiphilic block copolymers based on controlled free-radical polymerization. A macro-RAFT agent based on P(OEGMA) was chain-extended with hydrophobic monomers to create well-defined NPs. The latex NPs were obtained by RAFT polymerization using redox initiation and loaded with drug during formation. Bio-functionalization of the latex NPs by conjugating a target ligand, was investigated for targeted drug delivery. The NPs were characterized by SEC, 1H-NMR, DLS, SEM and UV. DLS results showed that the average hydrodynamic diameter of the latex was 50 nm with narrow distribution and that increasing solid content, from 7 to 10 %, of the latex resulted in increasing NP diameter, from 50 to 190 nm.

Polymeric nanoparticles explored for drug-delivery applications

254th National Meeting (2017)

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