Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Almost a century ago, when Paul Ehrlich, a German immunologist, attended an opera in which spirits possessed an extraordinary ability to achieve their goals regardless of the difficulties they faced, no one would think that he would come up with the idea of targeted drug delivery. When a drug is administered directly into the body, it leaves toxic footprints and will be eliminated rapidly. This issue has intrigued a broad community of scientists and propelled them to design small vehicles to carry and deliver drugs specifically to infected organs within the human body. Although synthetic materials have performed well, their toxicity and side effects have posed serious health risks to patients. Thus, recent years have witnessed a growing interest in developing cost-effective natural nanocarriers possessing acceptable biocompatibility, biodegradability, and functionalizability. In this research, cellulose, the most abundant biopolymer in the world derived from trees, is engineered to yield a new class of small vehicles bearing crystalline (ordered) and amorphous (disordered) regions, called hairy nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC). While the hair provides a drug conjugation capacity that is more than 10 times greater than conventional NCCs, the crystalline part retains its mechanical endurance and provides a versatile medium to attach a dye. These safe nanovehicles enable us to visualize the delivery pathway to make sure that the drug is localized in such affected sites as cancerous tumors. We are hopeful in our endeavor to design and synthesize a ubiquitous platform for drug tracing based on wood fibres, owing to hairy NCC's superior shape, morphology, and functionalizability. This technology will pave the way towards green and sustainable nanobiomedicine based on Canada's main natural resources, which will have a resounding impact on public welfare, especially for the patients suffering from chronic diseases.