Employing theranostic nanoparticles, which combine both therapeutic and diagnostic capabilities in one dose, has promise to propel the biomedical field toward personalized medicine. This review ...presents an overview of different theranostic strategies developed for the diagnosis and treatment of disease, with an emphasis on cancer. Herein, therapeutic strategies such as nucleic acid delivery, chemotherapy, hyperthermia (photothermal ablation), photodynamic, and radiation therapy are combined with one or more imaging functionalities for both in vitro and in vivo studies. Different imaging probes, such as MRI contrast agents (T(1) and T(2) agents), fluorescent markers (organic dyes and inorganic quantum dots), and nuclear imaging agents (PET/SPECT agents), can be decorated onto therapeutic agents or therapeutic delivery vehicles in order to facilitate their imaging and, in so doing, gain information about the trafficking pathway, kinetics of delivery, and therapeutic efficacy; several such strategies are outlined. The creative approaches being developed for these classes of therapies and imaging modalities are discussed, and the recent developments in this field along with examples of technologies that hold promise for the future of cancer medicine are highlighted.
The advent of genome editing has transformed the therapeutic landscape for several debilitating diseases, and the clinical outlook for gene therapeutics has never been more promising. The therapeutic ...potential of nucleic acids has been limited by a reliance on engineered viral vectors for delivery. Chemically defined polymers can remediate technological, regulatory, and clinical challenges associated with viral modes of gene delivery. Because of their scalability, versatility, and exquisite tunability, polymers are ideal biomaterial platforms for delivering nucleic acid payloads efficiently while minimizing immune response and cellular toxicity. While polymeric gene delivery has progressed significantly in the past four decades, clinical translation of polymeric vehicles faces several formidable challenges. The aim of our Account is to illustrate diverse concepts in designing polymeric vectors towards meeting therapeutic goals of in vivo and ex vivo gene therapy. Here, we highlight several classes of polymers employed in gene delivery and summarize the recent work on understanding the contributions of chemical and architectural design parameters. We touch upon characterization methods used to visualize and understand events transpiring at the interfaces between polymer, nucleic acids, and the physiological environment. We conclude that interdisciplinary approaches and methodologies motivated by fundamental questions are key to designing high-performing polymeric vehicles for gene therapy.
Polymer composition and morphology can affect the way polymers interact with biomolecules, cell membranes, and intracellular components. Herein, diblock, triblock, and statistical polymers that ...varied in charge center type (primary and/or tertiary amines) were synthesized to elucidate the role of polymer composition on plasmid DNA complexation, delivery, and cellular toxicity of the resultant polyplexes. The polymers were synthesized via RAFT polymerization and were composed of a carbohydrate moiety, 2-deoxy-2-methacrylamido glucopyranose (MAG), a primary amine group, N-(2-aminoethyl) methacrylamide (AEMA), and/or a tertiary amine moiety, N,N -(2-dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylamide (DMAEMA). The lengths of both the carbohydrate and cationic blocks were kept constant while the primary amine to tertiary amine ratio was varied within the polymers. The polymers were characterized via nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and size exclusion chromatography (SEC), and the polyplex formulations with pDNA were characterized in various media using dynamic light scattering (DLS). Polyplexes formed with the block copolymers were found to be more colloidally stable than statistical copolymers with similar composition, which rapidly aggregated to micrometer sized particles. Also, polymers composed of a higher primary amine content were more colloidally stable than polymers consisting of the tertiary amine charge centers. Plasmid DNA internalization, transgene expression, and toxicity were examined with each polymer. As the amount of tertiary amine in the triblock copolymers increased, both gene expression and toxicity were found to increase. Moreover, it was found that increasing the content of tertiary amines imparted higher membrane disruption/destabilization. While both block and statistical copolymers had high transfection efficiencies, some of the statistical systems exhibited both higher transfection and toxicity than the analogous block polymers, potentially due to the lack of a hydrophilic block to screen membrane interaction/disruption. Overall, the triblock terpolymers offer an attractive composition profile that exhibited interesting properties as pDNA delivery vehicles.
The formation, morphology, and pH and ionic strength responses of cationic block copolymer micelles in aqueous solutions have been examined in detail to provide insight into the future development of ...cationic micelles for complexation with polyanions such as DNA. Diblock polymers composed of a hydrophilic/cationic block of N,N-dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate (DMAEMA) and a hydrophobic/nonionic block of n-butyl methacrylate (BMA) were synthesized denoted as DMAEMA-b-BMA (X-Y), where X = DMAEMA molecular weight and Y = molecular weight of BMA in kDa. Four variants were created with block molecular weights of 14-13, 14-23, 27-14, 27-29 kDa and low dispersities less than 1.10. The amphiphilic polymers self-assembled in aqueous conditions into core-shell micelles that ranged in size from 25-80 nm. These cationic micelles were extensively characterized in terms of size and net charge in different buffers over a wide range of ionic strength (0.02-1 M) and pH (5-10) conditions. The micelle core is kinetically trapped, and the corona contracts with increasing pH and ionic strength, consistent with previous work on micelles with glassy polystyrene cores, indicating that the corona properties are independent of the dynamics of the micelle core. The contraction and extension of the corona scales with solution ionic strength and charge fraction of the amine groups. The aggregation numbers of the micelles were obtained by static light scattering, and the Rg/Rh ratios are close to that of a hard sphere. The zeta potentials of the micelles were positive up to two pH units above the corona pKa, suggesting that applications relying on micelle charge for stability should be viable over a wide range of solution conditions.
Secondary building units (SBUs) are molecular complexes and cluster entities in which ligand coordination modes and metal coordination environments can be utilized in the transformation of these ...fragments into extended porous networks using polytopic linkers (1,4-benzenedicarboxylate, 1,3,5,7-adamantanetetracarboxylate, etc.). Consideration of the geometric and chemical attributes of the SBUs and linkers leads to prediction of the framework topology, and in turn to the design and synthesis of a new class of porous materials with robust structures and high porosity.
Synthetic polymers have enabled amorphous solid dispersions (ASDs) to emerge as an oral delivery strategy for overcoming poor drug solubility in aqueous environments. Modern ASD products ...noninvasively treat a range of chronic diseases (for example, hepatitis C, cystic fibrosis, and HIV). In such formulations, polymeric carriers generate and maintain drug supersaturation upon dissolution, increasing the apparent drug solubility to enhance gastrointestinal barrier absorption and oral bioavailability. In this Review, we outline several approaches in designing polymeric excipients to drive interactions with active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in spray-dried ASDs, highlighting polymer-drug formulation guidelines from industrial and academic perspectives. Special attention is given to new commercial and specialized polymer design strategies that can solubilize highly hydrophobic APIs and suppress the propensity for rapid drug recrystallization. These molecularly customized excipients and hierarchical excipient assemblies are promising toward informing early-stage drug-discovery development and reformulating existing API candidates into potentially lifesaving oral medicines for our growing global population.
Cationic polymer vehicles have emerged as promising platforms for nucleic acid delivery because of their scalability, biocompatibility, and chemical versatility. Advancements in synthetic polymer ...chemistry allow us to precisely tune chemical functionality with various macromolecular architectures to increase the efficacy of nonviral-based gene delivery. Herein, we demonstrate the first cationic bottlebrush polymer-mediated pDNA delivery by comparing unimolecular, synthetically defined bottlebrush polymers to their linear building blocks. We successfully synthesized poly(2-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate) (pDMAEMA) bottlebrushes through ring-opening metathesis polymerization to afford four bottlebrush polymers with systematic increases in backbone degree of polymerization (
= 13, 20, 26, and 37), while keeping the side-chain degree of polymerization constant (
= 57). Physical and chemical properties were characterized, and subsequently, the toxicity and delivery efficiency of pDNA into HEK293 cells were evaluated. The bottlebrush-pDNA complex (bottleplex) with the highest
, BB_37, displayed up to a 60-fold increase in %EGFP+ cells in comparison to linear macromonomer. Additionally, we observed a trend of increasing EGFP expression with increasing polymer molecular weight. Bottleplexes and polyplexes both displayed high pDNA internalization as measured via payload enumeration per cell; however, quantitative confocal analysis revealed that bottlebrushes were able to shuttle pDNA into and around the nucleus more successfully than pDNA delivered via linear analogues. Overall, a canonical cationic monomer, such as DMAEMA, synthesized in the form of cationic bottlebrush polymers proved to be far more efficient in functional pDNA delivery and expression than linear pDMAEMA. This work underscores the importance of architectural modifications and the potential of bottlebrushes to serve as effective biomacromolecule delivery vehicles.
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