PDA-BASED NANOMICELLES FOR THE DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT OF HEPATIC AND PROSTATE CANCER

摘要

Cancer is one of the chronic diseases with worse prognosis and whose treatment still implies harmful side effects. Among the different approaches developed so far against this threat, nanomedicine is the most promising one for the development of efficient therapeutic and diagnostic (theranostic) agents. Thus, the design and synthesis of nanovectors that allow the targeted delivery of anticancer drugs and imaging agents, is highly needed. Based on these premises, in the present work we report on the design and synthesis of mannose-, galactose- and a dipeptide-coated nanomicelles for their application as smart nanovectors for drug delivery into hepatic and prostate cancers (see Fig. 1). These nanomicelles are easily produced by a simple method through the supramolecular self-organization and photo-polymerization of diacetylenic-based amphiphiles pre-functionalized with the desired specific ligand [1]. The polymerization which takes place without catalyst or initiators afford in pure form micelles unaffected by the dilution.