Multi-drug resistant diseases are one of the biggest challenges society is facing in the domain of healthcare. Contraction of a multi-drug resistant disease, whether through a microbial infection or the loss of chemotherapeutic effectiveness, results in an extremely poor patient prognosis given the severely limited treatment options. The rapid resistance development in microbes, for instance, has completely eviscerated the current antimicrobial drug pipeline. The resistance development of a variety of cancer cell lines has rendered treatment with a single therapeutic agent completely ineffective. Instead, chemotherapeutic treatments must rely on a bevy of chemotherapeutic agents and chemosensitizers to achieve remission, most often at the cost of the patient’s well-being, owing to significant toxicity.<br/><br/>Traditional, small-molecule drug therapy usually targets highly specific cellular processes or interactions, enabling resistance development through simple mutations in the pathogen’s genome. In contrast, macromolecular therapeutics consist of polymeric assemblies that exhibit selective but non-specific interactions with the pathogen, making resistance development extremely difficult. In fact, macromolecular therapeutic agents developed at IBM have shown no resistance development in the treatment of bacteria and viruses, in preliminary <i>in vitro</i> studies. Additionally, these agents have been found to be highly effective against drug-resistant bacteria and cancer cell lines, while maintaining very low toxicity towards healthy cells. Given these impressive features, macromolecular therapeutics hold significant promise for disease treatment.

Macromolecular therapeutics and combination therapies

2019 Spring National Meeting

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