Nanomedicine and Drug Delivery

Biography

Biography: Samira Jafari

Abstract

Breast cancer is arguably the most common cancer faced by females today and the second most common cause of death in women in the world.  Indeed, this illness has garnered much attention in the field of pharmacology research.  Modern chemotherapeutic anticancer treatments have come a long way in the fight against breast cancer, thus bringing science closer to a cure.  However, the nature of these drugs is to attack both cancerous and non-cancerous cells at the same time.  With this current approach, a patient’s health, in addition to the cancer, can succumb to chemotherapies. To counter this problem, and increase the efficacy of cancer treatment, methods to customize therapeutic anti-cancer drugs have emerged in the form of targeted drug delivery systems.  In our studies, we present a method of a drug delivery using magnetic polyurethane.   Here, we describe a biocompatible magnetic polymer that can be used to direct chemotherapeutic drugs to cancerous regions in a body using an external magnet.  We show how a co precipitation method with magnetic nano-particles (MNPs) followed by a silica coating process and an in situ polymerization yields the magnetic polyurethanes used in this study. Verification of synthesis for the drug carrier is shown using the characterization techniques of scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), and a vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM).  The efficiency with drug loading and release of chemotherapeutic medications to the synthesized magnetic polyurethanes is monitored using an HPLC-UV detector.  Our findings present a new biocompatible drug delivery system with a high capacity for loading and directing tow various chemotherapeutic drugs simultaneously to cancer sites with little to no toxicity to the surrounding non-cancerous cells.