Drug delivery systems increase the therapeutic efficiency of the chemotherapeutic agent by controlling the rate at which the agent is released from the carrier to the systemic circulation or tissues, minimizing its interaction with non-pathological sites. Available delivery systems exhibit high toxicity. However, natural biomaterial polysaccharides are highly stable, non-toxic, hydrophilic, biodegradable, and abundantly available. These polysaccharides also have low manufacturing costs compared to current lipid-based and protein-based delivery systems. In the research so far, a non-toxic plant-derived drug delivery system has been developed. A series of tissue culture experiments have been performed to study the safety and toxicity of this polysaccharide-based drug-delivery system at varying doses in different cancer cell lines. The results have indicated that this drug-delivery system does not display toxicity in regards to in vitro studies. Additional research including in vivo mice models are performed to further study the safety and toxicity effects of the polysaccharide-based drug delivery system. The overall goal of the current research is to maximize the effectiveness of the chemotherapeutic agent when combined with the newly developed plant-based drug delivery system. Current research focuses on repeating and furthering the cell proliferation experiments to determine the most effective concentrations of the anti-cancer drug and plant-based drug delivery system. The results, although preliminary, are promising as we continue to experiment with different dosages. The current study is ongoing and is continuing to make progress.

In vitro studies on non-toxic polysaccharide based delivery systems for anti-cancer drugs

255th National Meeting (2018)

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