Grant: CIHR Fellowship

An attractive approach to treating cancer is to inject a material at the location of the tumour which will slowly release a drug into the surrounding tissue. Since cancer drugs typically have significant side effects, the targeted release of the drug at the site of the tumour will avoid complications due to release of the drug throughout the body. For this strategy to be effective, the rate of drug release must be carefully controlled, and an appropriate carrier medium must be chosen. This medium must be non-toxic and degradable in the body, it must be easy to inject with a needle, and it must be compatible with the surrounding tissue. A novel material will be developed that is designed to satisfy these criteria and deliver a drug with an appropriate rate. The material, a hydrogel, will consist of a linear polymer that is cross-linked through reversible connections in order to form a gel-like consistency. The reversible nature of the cross-linking is expected to render the hydrogel degradable in the body, and compressible enough to be injected through a needle. The polymerization technique, ring opening metathesis polymerization, is ideal since the length of the polymer can be controlled and a narrow distribution of lengths can be obtained, leading to a well-defined material. Several versions of the polymer will be tested in order to determine the optimal rate of drug release. Furthermore, molecules that have affinity for the drug will also be incorporated into the hydrogel, in order to hold onto the drug and slow its release. It is hoped that this novel material will lead to more effective cancer treatments with fewer side effects. It is anticipated that the hydrogel may also have other applications in tissue regeneration, diagnostics and biological adhesion.