Funded Projects

The development of polymeric nanomedicine for cancer is often hindered by the limited approaches available for evaluating its performance in human physiological conditions. We propose an integrated experimental platform that consists of a lab-on-chip in vitro model and an animal cancer model for polymeric nanomedicine performance evaluation. We will develop new poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-zwitterionic (ZW) hybrid copolymers as the model self-assembled nanomaterials and test their performance in the integrated evaluation system. Both PEG and ZW polymers are commonly used biomaterials with biomedical-relevant merits; however, their broad biomedical applications have been significantly restricted by the concerns of immunogenicity and bioactivity hindrance of PEG and the low processability of ZW polymers, respectively. Here, we hypothesize that integration of PEG with ZW polymer will create novel hybrid copolymers with synergistic effects to combine biomedical-relevant merits of both PEG and ZW polymers and to minimize unfavorable properties of each component. We will synthesize and characterize a series of PEG-ZW hybrid copolymers. We will then develop PEG-ZW hybrid copolymer-based nanodrug formulations to deliver doxorubincin, a chemotherapeutic drug, for breast cancer. We will develop a microfluidic channel-coupled human microtumor array system to examine the circulation time, targeting efficiency and therapeutic efficacy of these nanodrug formulations under fluidic shear. Such results will be compared to the therapeutic efficacy obtained from xenograft breast cancer models. It is expected that the successful development of an integrated, physiologically-relevant evaluation system will open up new opportunities for the future development of polymeric nanomedicines for various diseases. This project will benefit from the complementary expertise of our team in polymer science (Cheng), engineered microtissue system (Zhao), nanomedicine and cancer animal models (Wu).