Novel Encapsulation Routes for Scaling up the Manufacture of Chemotherapy Drug Delivery Vehicles

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Cancer chemotherapy treatments cost the NHS £1.4 Bn each year and cause significant side effects that diminish the quality of life for patients. This project aims to develop new manufacturing processes that will enable the high throughput production of nanoscale polymer micelles loaded with anticancer drugs. Obtaining stable, loaded micelles is a challenge that has conventionally required toxic solvents. This project will use supercritical carbon dioxide as a solvent to eliminate toxic residuals. The resulting chemotherapy product is designed to minimize side effects by only releasing drug at the site of a tumour. Improved manufacturing techniques are expected to reduce the cost of the product.This project requires the student to learn polymer synthesis techniques and will be co-supervised by Dr Vincenzo Taresco at the University of Nottingham. The student will also learn the safe use of high-pressure equipment. Characterization skills to support this project will include dynamic light scattering, scanning electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction, IR and UV/vis spectroscopy and small-angle x-ray and neutron scattering. Students will learn to reduce their data correctly and analyze it with the relevant polymer physics models. This project will require interdisciplinary collaboration between chemistry, chemical engineering and pharmacology.