Prepartion and analysis of biodegradable dendritic macromolecules for enhanced tumor accumulation

Abstract

The most important problem in cancer treatment is that many of the side effects of drugs used. While these drugs kill cancer cells, they also damage healthy cells. To reduce the side effects of these drugs, to extend the time the drug molecules stay in the body and to increase the water solubility of drugs which are hydrophobic in their nature, they can be loaded into polymeric structures. Drug delivery using micelles which are composed of dendrimers is an effective way of delivering drugs to their targets. Due to the hydrophobic environment of the core of micelles, water insoluble drugs can easily be solubilized and thus loaded for delivery at the required targets. In this thesis, several micellar structures were obtained using novel polymer-dendron conjugates synthesized via Diels-Alder ―Click‖ reaction by utilizing furan-protected maleimide functionalized p(DEGMEMA) polymers with different generations synthesized via atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) and acetal dendrons of first and second generations containing anthracene unit at their focal point. Also, micellar stabilities were measured via fluorescence spectroscopy and dynamic light scattering (DLS). Sizes of these micelles were found to be less than 200 nm, a size suitable for drug delivery uses. In swelling studies, observed that dendron-polymer conjugate based micelles were highly stable rather than micelles formed from polymer itself under the addition an organic solvent, such as THF.