Engineering polymeric nano-micelles for controlled drug delivery

Séminaires & Conférences Chimie École Doctorale 459
Jeudi 23 Février 2012, 13h45
Salle de Cours SC-16.01 – Université Montpellier II
Engineering polymeric nano-micelles for controlled drug delivery
Professor Dhanjay JHURRY
ANDI Centre of Excellence for Biomedical and Biomolecular Research,
University of Mauritius, Réduit, Mauritius
Nanoparticle sustained drug delivery systems offer several advantages over
conventional delivery such as maintenance of optimum therapeutic concentration of drug
in the blood or cell, elimination of frequent dosing and better patient compliance.
Consequently, they are good candidates for more efficient drug release devices. As block
copolymer micelles attract increased interest as drug nanocarriers, there is a growing need
for tailor-made biodegradable polymers whose size and surface properties can be
intelligently designed not only to achieve long circulation times in the blood and sitespecific drug delivery but also to exploit physiological or biochemical features of
infectious diseases. For instance, only a few studies report on the use of block copolymer
micelles to encapsulate anti-TB drugs.
Our research has focused on engineering novel amphiphilic block copolymers based
on biodegradable synthetic polymers or biopolymers. We have developed a new family of
biodegradable poly(ester-ether)s and coupled them with PEG.[1,2] The resulting
copolymers self-assemble into nanometric spherical micelles and have proved quite
promising for the loading and sustained release of a number of anti-infectious, antiinflammatory or anti-cancer drugs.[3]
PolyLysine-b-caprolactone copolymers are another type of ABCs developed by my
group. The amino groups of lysine can be interesting for targeting or drug-conjugation.
They form nanometric micelles in solution and have been loaded up to 70% with anti-TB
rifampicin drug.[4]
The group also engineered graft copolymers based on marine polysaccharides.
Indeed, agarose-based systems present the unique advantage of having galactose end
groups, which can play a key role in cell targeting. Our oligoagarose-g-polycaprolactone
copolymers organize into spherical micelles. An increase in PCL length leads to higher
drug loading while sustained drug release was found to be faster with shorter PCL
chains.[5]
The design of these different systems and their efficacy as drug delivery devices will
be discussed during the presentation.
References
1. Lochee Y, Bhaw-Luximon A, Jhurry D, Kalangos A, Macromolecules 2009, 42, 7285-7291.
2. Lochee Y, Jhurry D, Bhaw-Luximon A, Kalangos A, Polymer International 2010, 59, 1310-1318.
3. Jeetah R, Lochee Y, Bhaw-Luximon A, Jhurry D, submitted 2011.
4. Veeren A, Bhaw-Luximon A, submitted 2011.
5. Bhaw-Luximon A, Musharat Meeram L, Jugdawa Y, Helbert W, Jhurry D, Polymer Chemistry 2011, 2, 77-79.