Dewan Taslima Akhter and Kristofer J Thurecht
University of Queensland, Australia
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Nanomed Nanotechnol
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third leading cause of cancer related mortality and morbidity. Chemotherapy is typically administered by intravenous injection and infusion which often fails to deliver an effective concentration of the drug at the target site, with severe side-effects occurring due to off-target delivery. Oral chemotherapy has the potential to open a new treatment concept called �??chemotherapy at home�?�. The aim of this project is to develop a model carrier for oral delivery of colon targeted anticancer therapeutics that incorporates drug-encapsulated nanoparticles within microcapsules suitable for oral delivery. An amphiphilic block copolymer of PEGMA-PMMA was synthesised and characterised successfully. Curcumin loaded micelles were formed having sizes of 30 and 70 nm with excellent drug encapsulation efficiency of 85.11% and 87.64%. Further, the micelles were encapsulated into an alginate microcapsule carrier to make a favourable formulation for oral delivery. In vitro release studies of the curcumin-loaded micelles showed a sustained diffusional release at pH 5.0 and 7.4. In vivo studies showed promising results.