Liver cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)) is the third leading cancer-related cause of death worldwide. Common treatments of HCC include targeted chemotherapeutic procedures (e.g., trans-arterial chemoembolization (TACE) and intra-arterial chemotherapy (IAC)) to mitigate tumor growth. In a TACE procedure, Doxorubicin (Dox) is delivered directly into the liver via a catheter. However, during the TACE procedure Dox is not completely retained by the liver, but also accumulates in other organs such as the heart. To mitigate these off-target toxicities, we investigated a polymer resin that can be deployed via catheter downstream from the tumor to effectively capture Dox before it reaches other organs. Because Dox binds to DNA nucleotide-base pairs, we hypothesized that incorporating DNA bases into a crosslinked polymer would enable effective Dox capture. We conducted a free-radical copolymerization in which methacrylic acid was crosslinked with ethylene glycol dimethacrylate in the presence of several DNA bases to produce a solid, hydrophilic material loaded with DNA bases. We then examined the ability of these materials to sequester Dox using UV-vis spectroscopy. We achieved up to 40 μg of Dox captured per mg of resin used at typical concentrations of Dox (0.05mg/ml). Our material had competitive capture efficacy compared to other reported materials.

Synthesis of polymer-nucleobase composites for chemotherapy drug capture

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