Characterization of Newly Synthesized Anti-Cancer Compounds in Liposomes for Targeted Drug Delivery Applications

CHARACTERIZATION OF NEWLY SYNTHESIZED ANTI-CANCER

COMPOUNDS IN LIPOSOMES FOR TARGETED DRUG DELIVERY

APPLICATIONS

Anna Wermer¹, Cora Carman¹, Jayla Irvin¹,  Mendi Marquez² , Robert Johnston², Andrew Hunt¹,

Liliya Frolova³, Michaelann Tartis^1,2,4

Departments of Chemical Engineering¹, Materials Engineering², Chemistry³, and Biology⁴

New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro, New Mexico

Liposomes are clinically used phospholipid based nanoparticles administered intravenously with long circulation times to allow for effective in vivo drug delivery, reducing adverse chemotherapeutic toxicity to normal tissues. This study utilizes liposomes as a test bed for anticancer compounds modified for ease of incorporation into lipid-based delivery vehicles such as microbubbles that can be combined with ultrasound for site-specific delivery. Microbubbles are metastable, making it difficult to directly study the potential for each newly synthesized lipid prodrug in microbubbles. Incorporating new prodrugs into liposomes allows facile investigation of stability, toxicity, and overall suitability for incorporation into microbubbles. Here, liposome size distribution was quantified via dynamic light scattering (DLS) measurements of 20 mol % prodrug loaded liposomes and monitored over a 7 day period post generation to assess stability. The half maximal inhibitory concentration, IC 50 , which is a measure of the effectiveness of the drugs to inhibit HeLa proliferation, was calculated from absorbance readings of the MTT assay. The initial data provides formulation parameters for generating stable liposomes for use as potential delivery vehicles for these novel anti-cancer prodrugs and potential for use in microbubbles. The next step is to determine the maximum incorporation of each prodrug, testing up to 60 mol % using UV-Vis spectroscopy.