Over the past decade, cancer mortality has decreased annually owing to early screening, advances in diagnostics and improved treatment regimens. However, with the high risks of relapse, metastasis, or drug resistance—either intrinsic or acquired during chemotherapy—cancer treatment often ends with limited success. The field of nanomedicine offers significant promise for improving human health and curing disease by applying the tools of nanotechnology to have molecular-level medical effects. Efficient drug delivery requires novel nanomaterials or micelles that are the therapeutic or can be loaded with therapeutics that have a hydrophilic shell to prevent protein adsorption and thus prolong blood circulation, and a hydrophobic core for loading anticancer drugs. Nanosize allows passive targeting to tumor tissues based on the enhanced permeability and retention effect. Ideal nanocarriers should possess these properties: 1) biodegradability and biocompatibility; 2) high loading capacity; 3) kinetically stability after injection; 4) narrow size distribution and 5) biological ligands for active targeting to tumor tissues.  Polymeric micelles formed from single copolymers are often lacking in one or more departments. The combination of two or more dissimilar block copolymers to form mixed micelles, on the other hand, is a practical and efficient approach to address many of the aforementioned issues without the need for complicated synthetic schemes. Some of the advantages that mixed micelles possess over their individual constituents include significant improvements in thermodynamic (by lowering CMC) and kinetic (through enhancing the hydrophobic interactions, stereocomplexation, H-bonding, ionic interaction or chemical cross-linking between the core-forming blocks) stability, improved drug loading, exquisite size control, narrow size distributions and ease of incorporating multiple functionalities (e.g. for stimuli-responsive drug release and cellular targeting).  This talk will focus on the use of stereocomplexation to enhance micelle based macromolecular chemotherapeutics and delivery agents.<br/>

Stereocomplex driven macromolecular chemotherapeutics and delivery agents

256th National Meeting (2018)

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