MULTIFUNCTIONAL LAYER-BY-LAYER NANOCAPSULES LOADING DOCETAXEL, ENZALUTAMIDE, RESVERATROL AND DOXORUBICIN WITH ENHANCED TARGETING, IMAGING AND THERAPEUTIC EFFECTS AGAINST PROSTATE CANCER AND OSTEOSARCOMA

The aim of this project was to develop a nanocarrier capsules to target tumours, especially prostate cancer and osteosarcoma. For the material the nanocore were thought to be made up by organic polymers such as Calcium, Phosphate. The nanocores alone were not able to target and deliver drugs due to their low size and chemical composition. For this reason, the layer-by-layer technique have been exploited in order to add specific properties upon surface of cores, avoiding changing the bulk their bulk properties. At the same time, also the layers have designed to be from natural compounds like Sodium alginate and Chitosan. The chitosan is well-known to be one of the most exploited positive polyelectrolytes, it is acquired by modifying the chitin from sea animals. Speaking about the alginate it was chosen because the nanoparticles had to be greener as possible with using natural materials from United Kingdom. One of the most spread biomaterials in England which has to be removed are algae because there is a pollution inside sea and rivers. Algae are well-known to contain different compounds which can be extracted, in the specific case of this project there are, carbon quantum dots formed from algae biomass, sodium alginate directly extracted from brown algae and anti-inflammatory agents. The drugs have been selected from the common drug used for the specific disease. For the prostate cancer the treatments comprise both chemotherapeutic agents and hormonal agents to contrast the growth and limit it. This is due to the hormones dependent way of growing for the epithelial cell of prostate. For this Docetaxel have been chosen as chemotherapeutic agent and Enzalutamide as hormonal antagonist. However, those molecules have been encapsulated in layers rather than inside cores due to their charge and nature. On the other hand, for osteosarcoma the standard agent is the Doxorubicin which is able to kill almost every kind of cancerous cells if internalized in the right way. All these drugs are currently used in treatment, there are several side effects by their use that mainly are the low specificity to target cancer cells and high killing rate. Therefore, if well-designed, nanoparticles can delivery these drugs inside the targeted cells without affecting normal cells and specifically release their content in the tumour site, decreasing drastically the impact of the side effect on the whole body. Lastly, resveratrol has been included in layer and cores in order to limit the inflammation state and was thought to be able to limit the spreading of the tumour microenvironment. The previous part regarded the therapeutic ability of the nanoparticles. For their versatility, nanoparticles can include also different diagnostic elements. For this reason, nanotheranostic approach was exploited and carbon dots used to allow nanoparticles to be detected in fluorescence.