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

癌症化疗每年花费NHS 14亿英镑，并导致显著的副作用，降低患者的生活质量。该项目旨在开发新的制造工艺，使高通量生产纳米级聚合物胶束装载抗癌药物。获得稳定的负载胶束是一个挑战，通常需要有毒溶剂。该项目将使用超临界二氧化碳作为溶剂来消除有毒残留物。由此产生的化疗产品旨在通过仅在肿瘤部位释放药物来最大限度地减少副作用。改进的制造技术有望降低产品的成本。该项目要求学生学习聚合物合成技术，并将由诺丁汉大学的Dr. Taresco共同监督。学生还将学习高压设备的安全使用。支持该项目的表征技能将包括动态光散射、扫描电子显微镜、X射线衍射、红外和紫外/维斯光谱以及小角度X射线和中子散射。学生将学习如何正确地减少数据，并使用相关的聚合物物理模型进行分析。该项目将需要化学，化学工程和药理学之间的跨学科合作。

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.