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One such team, led by
Jeffrey Hubbell, Ph.D., at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de
Lausanne (EPFL), in Switzerland, has developed a method that uses
light to create a well-defined polymeric nanoparticle with internal
spaces that can provide a friendly environment to water-insoluble
drugs and channels through which the entrapped drugs can escape into
malignant cells. The results of this effort appear in the
European Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences.
The investigators created
these nanoparticles from two different polymers that crosslink to each
other when exposed to light from an argon laser for one hour. They
then added the nanoparticles to a solution of doxorubicin and
evaporated the solvent used to dissolve the anticancer drug. Nearly
half of the drug in solution became encapsulated within the
nanoparticles. The researchers note that the resulting nanoparticles
contain a protein-repelling surface coating that should result in
favorable pharmacokinetic behavior.
Experiments to test the
drug-release characteristics of these nanoparticles showed that
maximum release occurred at approximately eight hours and then
remained close to that level for a week. The data imply that release
occurs through a diffusion mechanism, that is, drug travels through
channels in the nanoparticle to the nanoparticle surface, as opposed
to a disintegration mechanism in which the nanoparticle falls apart
and releases drug.
This work is detailed in a
paper titled, “Doxorubicin encapsulation and diffusional release from
stable, polymeric, hydrogel nanoparticles.” Investigators from the
University of Zurich, in Switzerland, and the University of
Manchester, in the UK, also participated in this study. An abstract of
this paper is available through PubMed.
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