Nanogels Building with Casein as Smart Carriers for Enzymesensitive Drug Delivery System for Cancer Therapy

PICCHIO, M. L.; CUGGINO, J.C.; MINARI, R.J.; ALVAREZ IGARZABAL, C.I.; CALDERON, M.; GUGLIOTTA, L.M.

Los Cocos, Cordoba

Simposio; XII Simposio Argentino de Polímeros (SAP 2017); 2017

Universidad Nacional de Cordoba

The development of nanoscale drug delivery systems for cancer therapies is a challenge that has attractedincreasing attention of the scientific community on the last years [1]. Due to the severe side effect of drugscurrently used for cancer therapy, there is a necessity to find new drug delivery systems that transport andrelease the drug only at the tumor sites. After parenteral administration, the carrier should ideally transportthe drug to the site of action (tumor) and release the drug only there. Recently, the stimuli responsiveproperties of nanogels have shown to be promising in order to control the unspecific release of drug beforereaching the target diseased tissue [2,3]. Degradation of the nanogels after cell internalization is a smartstrategy to deliver the drug only to tumor sites. It is known that Casein can be degraded by cathepsin B, whichare overexpressed inside the lysosomes of cancer cells [4]. In this context, this work describes the synthesisand characterization of nanogels based in Casein crosslinked with dl-gliceraldehido and their evaluation assmart carrier for the catephpsin B sensitive intracellular drug delivery of oncological drugs. Nanogelsprepared showed size of around 200 nm with good dispersability in water and are ideal candidates for theirutilization as smart carriers for passive target and enzymatic sensitive release of oncological drugs for cancertherapy.