Polymer-based nanostructures hold great potentials to overcome existing barriers in the accurate diagnosis and personalized treatment of cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Beneficial from the development of controlled polymerization methodologies, particularly the controlled radical polymerizations, polymer nanostructures with various compositions, sizes, and morphologies have been achieved, which lead to new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches with improved cancer care outcomes. In this regime, ultra-small polymer nanoclusters (PNCs), i.e., polymer nanoparticles with hydrodynamic diameter less than 10 nm, represent innovative pathway for clinical oncology and cancer research, due to their capacities on offering reliable renal clearance and enhancing active/targeting imaging and drug delivery. This presentation will highlight our recent works on developments of PNCs as novel molecular imaging agent and theranostic nanoplatform by applying functional random/statistic copolymers facilely prepared from reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) copolymerizations. The design and synthetic routes to address challenges including achieving high blood operation concentration, manipulating cluster size, tuning in vivo biodistribution and pharmacokinetics, controlling therapeutic agent releasing, and maintaining low non-specific tumor accumulation to improve detection specificity, will be described in detail, along with promising results.

Ultra-small polymer nanostructures from random/statistic copolymers by controlled radical polymerizations

254th National Meeting (2017)

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